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Forum Discussion
On Mac, aliases in Dropbox to folders within Dropbox no longer work across devices
I'm having the same problem as what the user Robio describes here:
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Mac-aliases-within-Dropbox-used-to-work-on-all-shared-devices/m-p/370300
That disc...
I imagine everyone is aware of this, but I still had this thread bookmarked, so I just popped in to say this issue appears to be fixed. I don't recall when it was fixed, but I'm running Dropbox 97.4.467 and aliases are working across devices within shared Dropbox folders.
Now if we can just get them to fix the problem of locked folders/files being not staying locked...
Hi Folks
I too have exactly the same proble of aliases made between folders in DropBox used to work on MacOSX (for many years) and just recently stopped working. This has to be a generic issue and not specific to any particular user/files, so if there is a solutiuon, it would help teh whole community. Mnay thanks
David
Daphne
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffWhat's wrong?... Why?... Am I typing something wrong? :thinking:
Daphne, Seems you have thrown out my post! Please, tell me why!?
APPEND: Excuse me for the unfounded accusation. Thanks, for the clarifications! :wink:
- Daphne
Hey Здравко, it seems that your post got caught up in the spam filter, I wasn't removing your post on my side. I've gone ahead and removed it from there for you.
It probably happened due to the length of your post so please bear this in mind when posting in the future.
Thanks!
The following solution worked for me: Don't use the MacOS "alias" command. Instead, create a symlink using the command ln -s in Terminal.
So, in my example in the OP, I can create a symlink by entering the following into Terminal:
ln -s ~/Drobox/Folder1 ~/Dropbox/Folder2
This will create a symlink "alias" of Folder1 inside of Folder2. In the Finder, the symlink will look just like a MacOS alias.
However, this solution has two huge defects:
- I believe that, for the symlink to work on two different machines, the absolute paths to the source files must be the same. This will fail, for example, if the name of the user folder containing the Dropbox folder is different. (Unfortunately, in MacOS, the ln command lacks the -r flag for making relative symlinks. I haven't been able to find a workaround for this.)
- You can't move the source file of the symlink without breaking the symlink. MacOS aliases are more robust. They will follow the source file around if it moves.
So it would still be very good if Dropbox recovered its old ability to use MacOS aliases.
Why would you change that?!?!! The ability to do this was like 50% of the reasoning behind me choosing Dropbox in the first place!!
How can I auto-sync a folder like 'Documents' now? Is it even possible? do I have to do it manually now?
Maybe I should switch to iCloud.
I imagine everyone is aware of this, but I still had this thread bookmarked, so I just popped in to say this issue appears to be fixed. I don't recall when it was fixed, but I'm running Dropbox 97.4.467 and aliases are working across devices within shared Dropbox folders.
Now if we can just get them to fix the problem of locked folders/files being not staying locked...
