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Forum Discussion
Can you remove the space in the dropbox folder name ("Dropbox (Company-Name)")?
I'm using my companies business dropbox account. And it created a folder called "Dropbox (my companies name here)".
Is there a way to remove the space between "Dropbox" and "("? I don't want to have a space in the path. So the folder name will become "Dropbox-Company" or "Dropbox_Company" or something, but not space.
It seems impossible.
Hi all,
Unfortunately, it's not possible to change the name of Dropbox folder, as many of you have discovered.
If you are using it for scripts then the best thing would firstly to parse the info.json and grab the path from there. The JSON is located:
Mac/Linux:
~/.dropbox/info.json
Windows will be one of these two paths:
%APPDATA%\Dropbox\info.json
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Dropbox\info.json
I say this as if you were to move your Dropbox folder at anytime then this would, of course, break any paths that explicitly referenced an exact folder path.
On a side note, spaces within file paths shouldn't cause issues within scripts, it's fairly normal to have some spaces in there, just ensure your path string is correctly formatted and your script should be fine.
I'm having the same issue with the space character! Additionally, I'm incorporating some Linux (bash) scripts that are unhappy with the parenthesis around the company-name. Can this be addressed at the same time - perhaps a Dropbox-company format?
Hi!
any advances on this?
Its really important to remove that space.
best,
It's a really daring choice to put a space in a foldername - Sure, for most programs it works. But not all scripts can handle this.
I just spend an entire evening debugging webpack to figure out why hot-deploy didn't work. Answer = Dropbox put a space in my path !"#€&€%#
Problem seen on OSX
Upvoted. This issue has bitten me many times. There is no need to have a space and many reasons to not have it.
I have the same problem. Need to eliminate the space!
I cannot believe that Dropbox would put a mandatory space in a directory name. This is very unprofessional.
Temporary fix: symbolic link. But who knows what unintended side-effects this will have someday when we forget this horrific catastrophe?
I suggest Dropbox using hyphen instead of brackets to naming the Dropbox folder.
Here we will have
Dropbox-CompanyName
If we then name our company name without space, we will have a folder name without space.
Ross_SDropbox Staff
Hi all,
Unfortunately, it's not possible to change the name of Dropbox folder, as many of you have discovered.
If you are using it for scripts then the best thing would firstly to parse the info.json and grab the path from there. The JSON is located:
Mac/Linux:
~/.dropbox/info.json
Windows will be one of these two paths:
%APPDATA%\Dropbox\info.json
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Dropbox\info.json
I say this as if you were to move your Dropbox folder at anytime then this would, of course, break any paths that explicitly referenced an exact folder path.
On a side note, spaces within file paths shouldn't cause issues within scripts, it's fairly normal to have some spaces in there, just ensure your path string is correctly formatted and your script should be fine.
The “fix” there does not help because it is not my script, but whole programs that I did not write that are now broken. We are not requesting a “new” feature. Dropbox used to work perfectly well , and then changed things with bad filenames. I can’t have the parentheses in the names either—it is not just the space. You keep adding new features I have no use of, but never fix what you broke. This has been going on a long time now.
@Ross_S: I don't understand how this can be marked as solved! This is just a disgrace.
First of all, what is this info.json file? How should I use that? This is just silly.
The solution seems to imply that Dropbox users should fix the software they "use," even if they didn't write it themselves, or may not even have access to the source code, let alone abilities to fix the problem.
This naming issue has been a constant source of so many problems since I migrated my professional account to my company's account some 8 months ago. It is often a silent problem too. Things just don't work as they used to, and you spend hours trying to figure out what the problem is. My latest problem was with a VSCode extension; the problem will (eventually) be fixed upstream, but I've already wasted 4 hours of my life that I'll not be getting back! Before that I spent weeks debugging a syncing problem that was related to this, after following a symlink suggestion from Dropbox support.
@Ross_S: Can you please unmark this as solved, because it isn't. Furthermore, please explain in a pinned message why this isn't solved already; what's the problem with helping legacy software live longer? And please give a timeframe for when it will be solved.
I agree that the problem has not been solved, but indeed, there has been a couple of workarounds posted. Dropbox has already, by their silence over the YEARS that this has been an issue, determined that this will never be "solved" to our satisfaction. That's why I don't use Dropbox Business, and never will as long as they continue to ignore this major problem. My guess is there are enough people who don't use legacy software and therefore Dropbox has determined that this is not a problem that has to be solved.
Dropbox is not alone in ignoring major bugs. There are some bugs in Microsoft Word that have been there since 2007. More than 10 years and dozens of version since then, and they've never bothered to fix these particular bugs. Technology companies obviously have to determine which features are important to the users, and unfortunately, Dropbox has determined that this bug is not important to most users. So I wouldn't expect a fix anytime soon. At this point, it's not even on the list of bugs they are intending to fix. My advice? Stick with the personal version of the software and skip the business version. You get many of the same benefits without the bugs. Luckily, they were very nice in helping me switch back to my personal version because I was nervous about losing my files when it switched back. I didn't lose anything, and have been using the personal version with about 15 different teams of people without any problems at all.
I still prefer Dropbox over GoogleDrive, iCloud, and OneDrive (though that may change as Dropbox appears to be trying to work more like these other cloud services which "take over" your system and won't stop bugging you about putting all your files up on the cloud drive. I prefer to manage my clouds (I use them all for different teams) as just a part of my file system, keeping my 10 TB hard drive as the major source for all my files.
The response: "If you are using it for scripts then the best thing would firstly to parse the info.json and grab the path from there. The JSON is located: “ may work for some people, but is completely useless for me. Many programs I use are broken because of this dropbox “feature” . I have wasted untold hours because of this. There should not only be no space, there should be no parentheses, and the user should have the option of choosing the directory name altogether.
- Ross_S
For those having issue performing a specific routing task:
If you were to outline what you are doing, and the error you are hitting, then the community here may be able to help you resolve the issue. The space shouldn't stop you performing the task you are doing.
Again I would advise; there is a space in our folder name, but this is incredibly standard in computing and in no way unusual.
Hi
Naming a customised dropbox folder is one of features we are crying for when starting Dropbox for Business.
Cheers
This is very frustrating. My company went with Dropbox upon my recommendation, and now we cant flash our firmware to our device, because the flashing software complains about the space. This basically makes our Dropbox account useless. It is such a simple fix, and yet I don't understand why it hasn't been fixed yet...
