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Elliott F.1's avatar
Elliott F.1
New member | Level 1
10 years ago

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 ho...
Desktop and Web
desktop app
Setting up the apps
Sync and upload
  • Stefanie's avatar
    Stefanie
    10 years ago

    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 syncing

    This 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!

Stefanie's avatar
Stefanie
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
10 years ago

Hi Elliott,

Sounds like you were on a Dropbox for Business team before. I’m sorry for any confusion this may have caused. If you downgrade from Dropbox for Business, the Dropbox folder on your desktop won't be renamed automatically back to "Dropbox".

Here are the steps on your Windows computer:

1) Unlink your account from the Dropbox desktop application. You can find the steps to unlink your account on the Help Center here here:

https://help.dropbox.com/accounts-billing/settings-sign-in/unlink-relink-computer-mobile

Once you’ve unlinked your account, Dropbox will prompt you to sign in. Please don't sign in yet.

2) Open your Dropbox folder.

3) Change your view settings, so that your hidden system files are viewable. You can find instructions on how to do this here:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/show-hidden-files#show-hidden-files=windows-vista

4) In Windows Explorer, delete the "Dropbox" folder.

5) Rename your "Dropbox (team name)" folder to "Dropbox".

6) Change the view settings to re-hide the hidden system files.

7) Restart Dropbox from Start -> All Programs and sign in to your account

I apologize for the inconvenience. Our engineers are working on a way to ensure that the folder will be automatically renamed in the future.

Best,
Sofia

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