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Forum Discussion
change my dropbox folder name on my PC
I have my dropbox folder in the D drive of my computer. For some reason, the dropbox folder is not named "D:\Dropbox", but "D:\Dropbox (Elliotfan)" with my account name together. Does anybody know how to return the name back to "D:\Dropbox" without messing up the saved files?
Thanks.
Hi Emilio,
I can only confirm what Rich already pointed out.
Dropbox for Business will allow you to access both your personal Dropbox and your work Dropbox from the same computer. To help signify which Dropbox folder is connected to which account, we've chosen to rename the business Dropbox to "Dropbox (business name)." Currently, there is not a way to change the name of this folder back to just "Dropbox".
By default, we place a hidden symlink from Dropbox to the new Dropbox (team name), so you may find that your applications can continue working by accessing this symlink.
However, if this does not work for you, and if you are comfortable creating symbolic links on your machine, there is a workaround that may help you. Please note that this workaround is not supported by our support team, so if you are unable to set up this environment, I'd recommend that instead of using this workaround, you move any files needed by your affected application out of your Dropbox folder instead.
If outside code sources don't cooperate with the space character or parenthesis character, the simplest workaround would be the following:
- pause Dropbox
- remove the hidden symlink at Dropbox
- Rename the "Dropbox (team name)" folder to Dropbox
- Place a symlink at "Dropbox (team name)" that points to "Dropbox"
- Resume syncingThis will allow Dropbox to continue accessing the content through the symlink, and it will allow any external code to use the "Dropbox" folder pathname that doesn't include the additional characters in the path.
I hope this helps!
Hi Sofia/All.
I came here from: https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/202867585-How-do-I-rename-the-root-folder-Like Emilio D. I also use LaTeX, Mathematica and develop codes Matlab / C. Which means change path names is a terrible headache.
I decided to test the Team Account option for Dropbox during this week, so my coworker and I could share this Team folder and not the "old school" shared folder.
Worst idea!
Every program lost track of shortcuts... well not a big problem, it is just have to find them. But when I starter to check LaTeX reports and some codes paths I realize the huge headache.
"Dropbox" changed to "Dropbox (anything)", that meant some LaTeX data bases like .bib bibliography we share from a single folder and others .cls files could not be found by LaTeX just because of the !dammit! space, and then I realized the same would occur for codes.
Options OR change the location structure OR find a way to rename Dropbox back again. I knew I couldn't do it while it is synchronizing. I read the steps above for Business and then I did these:
1) Stop Dropbox Sync
2) Change the name back to "Dropbox"
3) Restart Sync - Receive message about the change of name and if I would do a new installation or use the old name and settings for "Dropbox (anything)" by renaming this path again. I chose a new installation.
4) Download Dropbox Installer from my account on dropbox.com
5) Reinstalled Dropbox on My PC.
After some - a lot of - time all files were re-synchronized.
I beg you for next upgrade, give us the option to choose the name of the new Dropbox, I saw no need to change the old Dropbox just because there is a new "Dropbox (Team)" folder. Don't change the name of folders without asking for it. And as I learned with codes and so on:
DO_NOT_USE_SPACES_OR_ACCENTS_ON_NAMES_FOR_CODE_DATA
If the new name was "Dropbox_Specification", I could simply rename paths as I need, but the space character just made it impossible.
I hope my words may help.
FHZ.
- I just chatted with the help desk about this and apparently NO ONE ever read this message. Because they would have fixed this over the past year.
StefanieDropbox Staff
Hi Emilio,
I can only confirm what Rich already pointed out.
Dropbox for Business will allow you to access both your personal Dropbox and your work Dropbox from the same computer. To help signify which Dropbox folder is connected to which account, we've chosen to rename the business Dropbox to "Dropbox (business name)." Currently, there is not a way to change the name of this folder back to just "Dropbox".
By default, we place a hidden symlink from Dropbox to the new Dropbox (team name), so you may find that your applications can continue working by accessing this symlink.
However, if this does not work for you, and if you are comfortable creating symbolic links on your machine, there is a workaround that may help you. Please note that this workaround is not supported by our support team, so if you are unable to set up this environment, I'd recommend that instead of using this workaround, you move any files needed by your affected application out of your Dropbox folder instead.
If outside code sources don't cooperate with the space character or parenthesis character, the simplest workaround would be the following:
- pause Dropbox
- remove the hidden symlink at Dropbox
- Rename the "Dropbox (team name)" folder to Dropbox
- Place a symlink at "Dropbox (team name)" that points to "Dropbox"
- Resume syncingThis will allow Dropbox to continue accessing the content through the symlink, and it will allow any external code to use the "Dropbox" folder pathname that doesn't include the additional characters in the path.
I hope this helps!
This is not solved, but Dropbox needs to solve it (and mark it unsolved until then). To be clear, all that is absolutely needed is a checkbox for 'compatible dropbox naming' which will switch the space for an underscore and remove the parentheses. Of course it would be lovely to have full control of naming, but for the time being can you just stop your software breaking our computers please? Unbelievable that you've been promoting an unsupported workaround for over two years rather than just fixing this.
LOL at DropBox's latest redesign. Its cool, I guess... Martketing ploy. Most design media is mixed reviews, majority negative. Looks like it cost a lot of money, but doesn't have legs. A little Brutalism mixed with a few other shot term trends... Feels like some high level director was pressured to attempt to generate new business in new markets. Whomever was in charge of that **bleep**show def shat the bed on that one.
What would actually be cool is if you listened to your product team and simply let people rename their f*ng dropbox folders. So they don't have spaces and special characters.
That is literally all we want. No symlinks. Let us rename our folders. BOOM! Problem solved!
That would change everything. But you didn't prioritize that. Instead you launched a visual campaign that will be stale in 14-30days. I'm already over it. Its juvenile design at best. Screams style over function... childish, desperate. Ugh.
As a Dropbox user since Day 1 - PLEASE- stick to product design. And get it right. I've paid you at leat 3-5k a year by my books for almost ten years. I loved you, but you suck now! Sync.com is kicking your asses feature-wise up and down the court. The measly 15-20 Pro accounts I switched off DropBox to Sync might not mean **bleep** to whomever is reading this. But if you did care, you'd try to do a little better. Which you aren't. So.... yeah. **bleep** shame. Dropbox had every opportunity to not be an outdated and out performanced tool. Which is exactly what it is now.
Why is this forum topic marked "SOLVED"? The symlink workaround is not a sufficiant solution. This is not solved.
- Rich
Super User II
There is nothing to solve. Dropbox is working as intended.
Hallelujah! Thank you, Stefanie! Just what I needed.
New to Dropbox business. Like Fernando, I came from here: from: https://www.dropboxforum.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/202867585-How-do-I-rename-the-root-folder-
REALLY unfortunate to read through these forums and find these hacky, unsupported workaround answers. Especially after having what I would honestly consider excellent customer support from the Dropbox team helping me strategize and transition all our Pro accounts to a unified Business account.
As a web developer, I finally got all my synching done ( took 2 days to get all synced up, 250gb/700k files ). And today I finally get back into some coding, running into errors left and right - only to track them back to the space in the Dropbox folder name.
So... any other options besides a symlink? That solution is unacceptable for us.
And as a technology company - Dropbox should KNOW BETTER than to force a folder name with spaces AND special characters. That is day one dum dum stuff for anyone who works on a computer for a living. Whomever came up with the brilliant idea of naming a business folder 'Dropbox (Company)' should be let go immediately. My biggest fear is that, developers weren't questioned and some suits and project managers thought it would just 'look pretty' with a space and parens. Ugh.
Will be calling support tomorrow. Without a direct workaround, sorry Dropbox - you've got a good product and great customer support, but you screwed the pooch at the most basic level with this naming convention.
I agree 100% and had to tell them the exact same thing. How do you all not know about this?
It's been over a year that people have been justifiably complaining. It's an obvious, glaring issue that has never made any sense to anyone who uses dropbox outside of Windows Explorer or Finder; which I'm sure is a decent percentage of your users. Add an option to the settings to allow a root name change.
Fix this!
- Because I use LaTex and Mathematica (Wolfram) I have detected after installing Windows 8 and 10 (later) that these programs do not recognize the path to Dropbox. It is due to the space in the main folder of Dropbox, that is Dropbox (Univ.Palmas). I did not have this problem with Windows 7. How can I change the name of the main folder?
Thanks for the lighthearted humor on the subject, Luke. Hindsight is 20/20, and I sympathize with your plight. With Dropbox Business being only a few years old, this is human error rather than any lack of insight. Keeping spaces out of directory names is compsci 101 that predates even the earliest versions of Dropbox.
*Sigh*... Dropbox Business had me really excited. All the features I was looking for to supplement our local NAS. Going to try out this symlink hack job for a minute, but it looks like I'll be moving to another service and spending another few days moving all my company's data. Fun stuff.
That one little space is a deal breaker for us. Very unfortunate to find this out the hard way once I was 95% setup and ready to add my whole team.
Hi Sofia/All,
Same issue but on a mac (though in my case trialled Dropbox for Business and cancelled it, so now my only Dropbox folder has a different name). Does the same procedure work safely on mac? (i.e. unlink from dropbox, re-name and link again - would like to avoid re-downloading the entire file as its over 100GB, and don't want to break links for files/folders that have already been shared, obviously).
Thanks!
GJustin,
I've been in the computer/networking/internet(ARPANET) technology for 45+ years. Dropbox is only carrying on the legacy of big tech companies that think they know what users want or need more than users. It goes back all the way to the short-sighted thinking of only using 2 digits for years just to save a few bits. FYI, I can't tell you what a headache it was in the mid-90's to 1999 going through millions of lines of code to get 2 digit years changed to 4 digit years as well as re-code functions and calculations. Next up was the 8.3 file names which those headaches are still with us today. Someday, some company is going to listen to users and/or plan for 100 years in the future but I won't be living long enough to see it. LOL
Yeah, I can get around it, its just causing unnecessary complexity and issues with my setup. I have some node modules that are tripping over the space and I'm not about to monkey patch 3rd party dependencies to get around Dropbox's space when there are other options. For me its not the end of the world to work around, but I don't want it to be company policy to have to explain an undocumented and unsupported hack to everyone on my team every time they get a build error or filepath issue. I rely on my cloud service too much to have a symlink hack in the middle of it, even if only for my general piece of mind.
Been on Dropbox Pro for years and years ( along with my team that I also pay for ), and have had Dropbox personal since pretty much Day 1. There's been a few rough patches in the past, and I keep coming back because Dropbox is a great tool with excellent customer support. But yeah, going down my list of other cloud services... c'est la vie.
So is there a solution to this that isn't a symlink now? Since joining dropbox for business many of my scripts no longer work since they receive the path which contains spaces and special characters (even when symlinked). Is there really no way that you can just rename the root folder? How can Dropbox rename it for you and not allow you to change it something else?
