You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
How could I get Dropbox Paper 2020?
How could I upgrade to Dropbox Paper 2020 from the older version?
This is the most stupid thing Dropbox could have done. I mean not upgrading everybody at the same time! Over 2 years of transition if absolutely unacceptable. Through all my frustration, I found a temporary workaround:
My partner is on the 2020 release and I'm not. First, my partner created a Paper document and put it into a project share folder. (No need to share it because it's already in a shared folder) Everybody can see the .paper document. (I couldn't create that file without the 2020 release) When I need a new document, I duplicate that file, move it to wherever I want, rename it and reformat it. That's how I can use Paper like a 2020 release without having it.
For the document that already exists, I had to copy-paste the content from the old to the new document.... for each one. I was lucky, I had just a few.
I hope this will help someone and calm some frustrations.
However, my deception toward Dropbox is unrepairable.
Given that Dropbox is not putting any heft behind the roll-out indicates that they are not serious about this product, which is a real pity. I use a lot of notes taking apps and this one is by far my favourite for collaborative editing. A key feature for me even considering it as a solution for our company was having a proper integration with the file system so that I have everything in one place as well as full control over the data by keeping a private copy on the user drive in an open format. Without this feature, I could as well use Apple Notes.
It's Q1 2023. Now the migration guide indicates the upgrade for legacy users is Q3 2023. Assuming the deadline is respected, it will have been 4 years since Paper 2020 was introduced for new users in 2019. Unfortunately, based on past experience, it's hard to believe that this deadline is meaningful.
For those of you still holding onto this completely absurd situation, may I recommend checking out all the new features of Google Docs that match most of what Dropbox Paper does.
There's now a pageless mode (see Page Setup), sidebar navigation, table of contents, Smart Chips, footnotes, pretty decent project management tables, comments & visual text edit suggestions, etc. Plus plenty of things Dropbox Paper doesn't have, like tons of high quality fonts, line and paragraph spacing flexibility, bookmarks, math equation support, not to mention it's far more widely accessible and familiar to people.
