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su_su_su's avatar
su_su_su
New member | Level 2
7 years ago

Creating shortcuts within a Dropbox folder

Dear Community,   I am working with several other people in a share Dropbox folder, which contains several subfolders. Now I wanted to create a shortcut from one subfolder to another subfolder with...
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  • Sanchez's avatar
    Sanchez
    7 years ago
    Hey su_su_su, welcome to our community! 

    If you’re attempting to create shortcuts (.lnk files) from within Windows in your local Dropbox folder, this will not work. When you do this, the shortcut will work for you, on your computer, but not for other users whom you are sharing the file with. Dropbox will sync the shortcut as a shortcut file, rather than the file that the shortcut points to, and it is pointing to a location on your computer. 

    We suggest that you remove these .lnk files in order to avoid any confusion. You can identify a shortcut by looking for a small arrow overlaid on the file icon. If Dropbox is running, the Dropbox syncing icon may cover the shortcut icon, so you will need to quit Dropbox temporarily if you want to check on the files you currently have stored in your local Dropbox folder. Alternatively, you can use the Windows search function to search for all .lnk files within your Dropbox folder, and then delete them. 
     
    What you could do is to create a document into which you can paste the addresses of these folders from your browser. As you open each folder location in your account online, copy the address from your browser’s address bar, and paste it into the document. Then, you can save the document as a PDF, and place it in the top level folder, or any other location in your Dropbox. All links will be live, clickable, and will directly take the user to the linked location. This will only work at Dropbox.com, and if you move folders around, the links will break, and you’ll have to modify the original document, and save again as a PDF. 

    Another way to do this would be with Paper. If all your collaborators are using Dropbox Paper, you can create this document here, and just share it to everyone, without needing to save or export it to PDF. Any edits you make to this document will be instantly seen, in real time, by all users, ensuring that all users have the same information. 
    We hope this helps! 

    Walter & Sanchez
limonene's avatar
limonene
New member | Level 2

Hello qubitstx, I tried your solution, and noticed it was the best workaround until Dropbox sorts this out!

Unfortunately when using the %USERPROFILE% trick, my PC doesn't accept that it is a valid file path. I think I must be doing something wrong. Do we keep the "Users" part of the file path? i.e.

C:\Users\%USERPROFILE%\Dropbox\...

I'm trying to set this up for my team, and pray that they're all on C:\!

qubitstx's avatar
qubitstx
New member | Level 2
6 years ago

Limonene,

Just like Rich said, it all depends on where Dropbox is storing files on your computer.

If you go to Dropbox preferences-->Sync-->Dropbox folder location, this is what you are trying to emulate with a system variable.  In the default Windows install case, this is where it dumped all of my files.

You might be able to hack around this restriction by having all users create a %DROPBOX% environment/system variable (specific to their computer), and using this variable in the link, instead of the %USERPROFILE% variable.

https://superuser.com/questions/813280/windows-how-to-use-user-defined-environment-variables-in-system-path

(FYI, you shouldn't need the C:\Users\ before %USERPROFILE%, as the variable should contain that portion already.  Running echo cd %USERPROFILE% should help you figure out what's in the variable.)

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/API-Support-Feedback/Query-for-local-dropbox-folder-location/m-p/169505/highlight/true#M6284

 

 

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