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Boscastle's avatar
Boscastle
Explorer | Level 4
6 years ago

Cannot preview or open .lnk files from my account on my new device, what happened?

Hi, I have been using Dropbox happily with windows 7. My computer recently died and my new computer has windows 10, all different to me... Anyhow, I downloaded a Dropbox link onto my desktop, when ...
Third Party Integrations
  • Daphne's avatar
    Daphne
    6 years ago
    Hey again, Boscastle - thanks for your reply!
     
    So if you don’t have the actual files on your computer that would be opened via the shortcuts then you will not be able to open them on the new computer. So I understand that the shortcuts were created by mistake when copying files into the Dropbox folder on the old computer, is that right?
     
    What you will need to do in this case is move the actual files over to your Dropbox folder so that they can be opened on the new computer. I would recommend to select the files on the old computer, and then right click them to correctly copy and then paste the files into the Dropbox folder. This will ensure that the files are copied over rather than shortcut links.
     
    Also, if all the files currently in your Dropbox folder are all .lnk shortcut files, then I would suggest you can just simply delete these before copying over the files correctly to avoid confusion. In doing this, all the changes will sync over to your new device and you should be able to open the files correctly.
     
    Let me know how you get on with this - Cheers!
Daphne's avatar
Daphne
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
6 years ago
Hey there, Boscastle.
 
From what I understand, you have a file in your Dropbox account that was a shortcut to another file. All this would be doing is pointing to another file in your computer, so on clicking the shortcut the system is redirected to open the desired file.
 
While Dropbox can sync this type of file, it is not expected to preview on the web. During syncing from your old to new computer, Dropbox wouldn’t have made any changes to the files within it (and linking your gmail wouldn't have caused this either).
 
What I’m thinking is that the file path that the shortcut uses is different than the file's location on the new computer, most likely due to a username change. I suspect this may be the reason you receive the error message as the default location for the Dropbox folder would be:
 
C:\[USERNAME]\Dropbox….
 
Hope this helps to clarify the matter - Cheers!
  • Boscastle's avatar
    Boscastle
    Explorer | Level 4
    6 years ago

    Hi Daphne,

    Thank you for the advice.

    I think you are probably right, however my new computer had no files on it at all,so it was something I did when trying to download dropbox to my new computer.

    I have looked at every item that is now linked to dropbox on my computer and the same problem remains, except now I seem to have duplicated that file too.

    Do you know how I could change the file name via my drop box account or how I can put things back to how they were prior to downloading Dropbox to my new compuer?

    Many thanks

    • Daphne's avatar
      Daphne
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
      6 years ago
      Hey again, Boscastle - thanks for your reply!
       
      So if you don’t have the actual files on your computer that would be opened via the shortcuts then you will not be able to open them on the new computer. So I understand that the shortcuts were created by mistake when copying files into the Dropbox folder on the old computer, is that right?
       
      What you will need to do in this case is move the actual files over to your Dropbox folder so that they can be opened on the new computer. I would recommend to select the files on the old computer, and then right click them to correctly copy and then paste the files into the Dropbox folder. This will ensure that the files are copied over rather than shortcut links.
       
      Also, if all the files currently in your Dropbox folder are all .lnk shortcut files, then I would suggest you can just simply delete these before copying over the files correctly to avoid confusion. In doing this, all the changes will sync over to your new device and you should be able to open the files correctly.
       
      Let me know how you get on with this - Cheers!
      • Boscastle's avatar
        Boscastle
        Explorer | Level 4
        6 years ago

        Hi, thank you for the reply.

        I spoke to the computer person in the end and he said that it looked likes I had only copied the link from my old computer to Dropbox, so I have asctually lost everything :-0

        Lesson learned and thank you for helping.

         

        This thread is closed due to inactivity. Please feel free to create a new topic here. 

         

         

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