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Lost Dropbox shortcut in Locations
Just installed DB 162.4.5419 on my Mbk Air M1 (Montery 12.6.1) and it created a shortcut labelled 'Dropbox' in Locations in the Finder Sidebar - NOT in favorites as previous. I gather this is to be ...
Thank you for your help! This remedied the problem. It is, however, a little different for Ventura users. See below:
In Ventura 13.1 go to:
- Finder Window
- Finder Settings
- Click on the "sidebar" icon
- In the "Locations" list click or unclick Cloud Storage, then click again so it is checked.
All your cloud storage locations will now show up. Dropbox should be back on there.
It appears impossible to remove the Dropbox folder from ~/Library/CloudStorage maybe because this folder location has greater security. Drag to the bin doesn't work and there doesn't appear to be any menu command that would override that possibly using Sudo. I'm not very good with Unix CLI do I won't go down that track.....
The fact the Dropbox folder remains there is possibly fooling the installer into thinking that a shortcut has already been created and so it skips that step in its install routine. As a result after the reinstall, there is still no shortcut in the Locations sidebar.
One for the Devs to sort out, but I doubt I'll be the last person to delete the shortcut from the locations panel in Finder sidebar, either accidentally or on purpose.
Anyone else offer any help with this? Basically I've botched the shortcut in the Locations area of the Finder sidebar, it's now vanished and I can't recreate it. The only way I can see to do this, is via a complete delete of Dropbox - IE delete *all* relevant files - followed by a clean install. That way I should ultimately find the DropBox shortcut in the Locations area of the Finder sidebar.
Moving the Dropbox app to the Bin and then reinstalling it doesn't recreate the shortcut in Locations.
MacBook Air M1; MacOS Monterey 12.6.1 Dropbox 162.4.5419.arm64
Hi Hannah:
Thanks for the reply.Tried yet another reinstall of the Dropbox app in an attempt to recreate the sidebar Locations shortcut.I've figured out why it's impossible to recreate the shortcut in the Locations sideba even with a reinstall of the Dropbox app.Even if you attempt to completely delete all things related to Dropbox including the app and any support files, it is impossible to delete the Dropbox folder contained in ~/Library/CloudStorage When doing the reinstall of the DropBox app, it must see this Dropbox folder is already there and think the shortcut is in place. I suppose it does stop accidental or malicious removal of the Dropbox folder but I can't believe I will be the only one who accidentally removes the shortcut and finds it impossible to recreate it.One way round this would be for the installer app to ignore the existing dropbox folder and recreate the shortcut overwriting any existing one. This should cover the possibility that the user has accidentally deleted it.Does anyone know a way that a shortcut can be recreated and placed in the locations sidebar? Right now the only way I can access the Dropbox folder is via the menu bar icon.I have the same issue (Mac Mini M1, macos 12.6, dropbox app v163.4.5456). I recently followed the update procedure prompted by the dropbox app and it went through fine. I'm not sure whether Dropbox ever showed up under locations, but it doesn't now and I can't seem to get t to show up there (just like the other cloud storages listed in .../Library/CloudStorage/)
Hi Christoph H 2: I didn't think I would be the only one to experience this problem and I doubt we'll be the last.
The Dropbox team seem content to see it as a MacOS problem and wash their hands of it. It should be perfectly possible to reinstall the Dropbox app and have it recreate the link in the proper place. I doubt this would mean significant mods to the installer package to allow it to do this. When all is said and done it's the changes to the installer and positioning of the Dropbox folder that is allowing this to happen.
Alternatively a short 'make link' routine to do the same job would be OK. Either way remediation should be possible without a lot of bother.
Backup your DropBox contents to a safe place. Then try booting into 'safe' mode. Once in Safe mode remove all references to Dropbox including the app, any prefs etc. I think that somehwere on this forum there is a complete list of all the components DropBox installs.
Note that you can delete ~/Library/CloudStorage since when you log out or reboot, the OS will create a fresh empty copy. Only do this if you have backed up any sub-folders contained in ~/Library/CloudStorage. If you do delete it other cloud storage folders contained in there will also be deleted and you will probably have to reinstall those cloud apps to recreate the folders. I only had the Dropbox folder in there so it wasn't a problem as I was deleting it anyway.
Now logout and log back in to user mode. Download the latest installer from the Dropbox website and reinstall Dropbox. Depending on the installer you should find either; the Dropbox folder is in the 'traditional' location and you have a message to update the DB app, OR the Dropbox folder is in ~/Library/CloudStorage You may have to log back in to Dropbox but the Dropbox folder will probably re-populate itself. If it doesn't you should have your back up which you can use to do it manually.
As always use at your own risk since I don't accept any responsibility for lost data, although if you've backed up your current DB folder that shouldn't happen. However the above worked for me and I had a new link in the 'locations' sidebar....
For the record this was on MacOS Monterey 12.6.2 No idea whether the same process will work with MacOS Ventura.
