We're making changes to the Community, so you may have received some notifications - thanks for your patience and welcome back. Learn more here.

Forum Discussion

Paul_Blitz's avatar
Paul_Blitz
Explorer | Level 4
3 years ago

Why does Dropbox keep messing with my desktop shortcut? (Win 10)

If I create a desktop shortcut to, say, "C:\Users\Paul\Dropbox\Work stuff\", then it stays like that, and it works the way I want: I click on it, and it QUICKLY opens the local folder (which is actually one of my dropbox sub folders)

 

If instead, I create a link to "C:\Users\Paul\Dropbox\" then initially it works fine, and as above it QUICKLY opens up the dropbox root folder.

 

However, after a while (I'm thinking it may include a logout / login, so dropbox gets started up again) it changes that link to be {"C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe" /home}.... which is very SLOW to open!

 

I did NOT ask it to make that change!

 

Any ideas what's happening?

 

 


  • Paul_Blitz wrote:

    However, after a while (I'm thinking it may include a logout / login, so dropbox gets started up again) it changes that link to be {"C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe" /home}.... which is very SLOW to open!


    Don't call the shortcut Dropbox. Call it My Dropbox or something else and it will  be left alone. Dropbox will always update the desktop shortcut called Dropbox. It gets changed to what it originally was, which is meant to launch the Dropbox application if it's not already running, and then open the Dropbox folder.

  • semioniy's avatar
    semioniy
    New member | Level 2

    I find it very annoying, so here's what I did:
    re-created original shortcut, made it read-only, opened its properties and on Security tab denied all listed users (+ group "Everyone") rights to write to this file. If Dropbox finds a way to work around this, I'm gonna be more concerned about windows security, than about my dropbox folder shortcut 😁

     

  • Rich's avatar
    Rich
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II

    Paul_Blitz wrote:

    However, after a while (I'm thinking it may include a logout / login, so dropbox gets started up again) it changes that link to be {"C:\Program Files (x86)\Dropbox\Client\Dropbox.exe" /home}.... which is very SLOW to open!


    Don't call the shortcut Dropbox. Call it My Dropbox or something else and it will  be left alone. Dropbox will always update the desktop shortcut called Dropbox. It gets changed to what it originally was, which is meant to launch the Dropbox application if it's not already running, and then open the Dropbox folder.

    • Paul_Blitz's avatar
      Paul_Blitz
      Explorer | Level 4

      Ah, another of those "well documented features" eh? Thank you, that makes sense, and your solution works nicely!

About Apps and Installations

Have a question about a Dropbox app or installation? Reach out to the Dropbox Community and get solutions, help, and advice from members.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!