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DavidJGv2c's avatar
DavidJGv2c
New member | Level 2
4 months ago

Can I sync a folder in Apps to a shared project (possible symlink/shortcut question)?

I have a problem, that quite possibly has already been answered in this community, but the last time it was brought up was several years ago so I figured I should pose the question again. I have Overleaf projects synced to my Dropbox where they are all located in `/Apps/Overleaf/`, additionally, I have a folder that is shared between myself and several colleagues where we are working on a joint project, let's call it `/shared_projects/project_01/`. One of these colleges (the one who hosts the original folder) is very against using Overleaf and writes all his documents on a LaTeX editor locally on his machine, hence why we're using Dropbox and not just sharing an Overleaf project directly. To get my material on Overleaf, I have to actively and manually move new material in `/shared_projects/project_01/` over into the corresponding folder `/Apps/Overleaf/project_01/` via copy/paste. We are about to start a new project, let's call it `/shared_projects/project_02/`, and I'd like this project to be synchronized to a corresponding folder in Overleaf,  `/Apps/Overleaf/project_02/`. This would normally, be very easy if I could just create a symlink from `/Apps/Overleaf/project_02/` and put that in `/shared_projects/`, but I have tried this and the symlink is not showing up in Dropbox. I created the symlink in my Windows subsystem for Linux (WSL2) running a Linux version of Dropbox (following these instructions on GitHub) hoping it would work, as according to Can Dropbox sync symlinks?: "On computers running macOS or Linux, the path of the file or folder the symlink points to can be synced to Dropbox." Now, I fully understand that WSL2 is not technically Linux, but actually somewhere in between a full-blown Linux OS and just a bunch of libraries that are running on Windows (e.g. Cygwin). Ultimately, doing things via a symlink route does not really matter to me as much as just getting a functional solution going, so if anyone could aid in finding a fix to my problem, I'd greatly appreciate it!

  • Nancy's avatar
    Nancy
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Thanks for posting today on our Community, @DavidJGv2c!

     

    Dropbox doesn’t support symlinks in general, I’m afraid, so there’s not much I can offer here unfortunately. 

     

    However, I’m leaving this thread open for other users, in case they have something more to contribute or provide a workaround.

     

    If you need something else, I’ll be right here.

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