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Henrik K.3's avatar
Henrik K.3
Explorer | Level 3
8 years ago

Dropbox is Changing the file name to UPPERCASE letters

Sometimes filenames in my Dropbox folder(s) are changed to UPPERCASE letters. Seemingly random, but probably isn't :)   I can see from the version history that the file has been renamed (changing f...
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  • Jane's avatar
    Jane
    8 years ago
     
    You may keep in mind that Dropbox supports case-sensitive file names, but Windows pcs don't. While it may appear that you can have mixed case file names, they both don't at the file system level. Consequently, you can’t have two files named "temp" and "TEMP" in the same folder on Windows operating systems.
     
    Thus, there is no event that Dropbox can send to a Windows or Mac client that says "rename temp to TEMP" because that's not possible. This will work on Linux, and specially configured Mac OS, because they support mixed case.
     
    What you can do to work around this issue is rename the file twice, like this example:
     
    1. rename "temp" to "tmp"
    2. rename "tmp" to "TEMP"
     
    Hope this helps you clarify, let me know if you need more details about it in your reply! 
mauricev's avatar
mauricev
Collaborator | Level 9

I have files with uppercase (capital) letters in the filenames. Recently, I've noticed that Dropbox is on its own converting them to lower case. Even if I manually change the name to something else and then set it back to with upper case letters, it will eventually get converted. I decided on an experiment to confirm Dropbox was doing this. I moved the parent folder out of Dropbox with all its upper case letters in the filenames intact. They didn't change*. Then after it finishing syncing their deletion, I moved the parent folder back. As expected, Dropbox converted the upper case letters. This is on a Mac Pro with Mojave.

*This is on an external ZFS RAID, but ZFS completely honors the lower/upper case distinction even though it's configured case insensitive. Dropbox is at fault here. 

Jane's avatar
Jane
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
5 years ago
Hey mauricev, thanks for pinging me back with your findings! 
 
We currently support storing the Dropbox folder on a HFS+ or APFS-formatted hard drive on a Mac, so my hands are tied I’m afraid. 
 
Having said that, I’m wondering if checking the file’s Version History helps trace back how this appeared in the first place &/or which is the device that’s triggering the case conversion (i.e. if there's more than one devices accessing the file). 
 
Please let me know & I’ll try to help as much as I can. Thanks again!

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