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

Questions13's avatar
Questions13
Helpful | Level 5
6 months ago

Moving files out of Dropbox now defaults to the 'copy' function

Starting sometime this week, whenever I try to move a file out of my Dropbox to another location on the same drive, it will default to 'copy' and leave the original still in Dropbox. This duplication...
Delete
deleting
Desktop
desktop app
Dropbox Basic
Moving
Organize
Organizing
  • BenDBX's avatar
    BenDBX
    3 months ago

    Hi Everybody,

     

    Thanks for your patience while we looked into this. This change in behavior was the result of a change by Microsoft. Dragging a folder out of a root sync folder now defaults to the copy function on Windows 11. This change is not limited to Dropbox, but any root sync folder.

     

    As a workaround, shift+click and drag will allow the expected cut + paste or "move folder" functionality.

     

    Regards,

    Ben

Rich's avatar
Rich
Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
Yuikol wrote:

... when I went to move a file out of dropbox onto my desktop it would remove it from my dropbox. ... Today ... dragging a file onto my desktop just copied it.

This process is controlled by your operating system; not Dropbox. On your computer, Dropbox is just a folder like any other, and behaves as any other folder.

Yuikol's avatar
Yuikol
Experienced | Level 12
4 months ago

Downloads folder, documents folder, etc. are acting correctly. They move the file, not copy it. Only Dropbox is acting differently now. I'm not finding any settings related to this when I look in the Windows Setting app or in the file explorer options. 

 

Just seeing this now. I can "move" a file into Dropbox without copying it, but taking it out makes a copy.

About Delete, edit, and organize

Solve issues with deleting, editing, and organizing files and folders in your Dropbox account with support from the Dropbox Community.

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!