New named Dropbox structure

[t4ngml]

I am a user of DropBox Business, on Windows 10.

Last week, I suddenly realized that the shortcuts to some of my Dropbox folders were broken.

A quick look learned me that the structure had changed.

While I used to access my folder through:

C:/User/{username}/Dropbox (COMPANY NAME)/, I can now find them at:
C:/User/{username}/{COMPANY NAME} Dropbox/MyFirstName LASTNAME/

Now, both structures seem to remain while the first one is now a hidden shortcut (although I can't seem to see where it links to).

So that I don't really know where my files actually are.

Is this change documented anywhere?

Thanks

After a couple of days, I realized this happened to all of this Dropbox Business users across the company, Mac and Windows, and that it messes up with backup strategies.

I didn't find anything about this new structure in DropBox's changelog.

[Rich]

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@Structuraldood wrote:

Is there truly no method to opt out of this change in naming convention?

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You can try contacting support and see if it's an option, but it's been my understanding that while you can postpone the upgrade, there's no way to opt out of it permanently.

• https://help.dropbox.com/plans/upcoming-business-team-changes

[ComputerGoesBeeeeeep]

The latest business team changes have broken my sync.

The new naming system moved folders around. 

I don't know why Dropbox had to do this and I don't know why I could not suspend this "upgrade" but here we are. Some API integrations also failed because of this.

Little bit annoyed already, I noticed that one client still has not moved the folder project (which is pretty big) to its new destination and the sync is stuck at 300 files and 2 days remaining. 

Reboot and restart of Dropbox did not help. 

What would be your recommendation to solve this? I hope to avoid uninstall Dropbox completely, but fail to see another way atm. 

And please Dropbox, do not make unnecessary and (with only 30 days notice!) mandatory changes in the future. Especially when your desktop sync software is not robust enough to handle it. I know it isn't great to ask for help and at the same time speak badly about the product, but I don't know where else I could voice that criticism.  

[Megan]

Hi @ComputerGoesBeeeeeep, sorry to hear about this, let me help! 

Can you send me a screenshot of the app's syncing status, along with its version? Also, how long has it been like that, and what is the size of the project? 

Let me know more! 

[ComputerGoesBeeeeeep]

Hi @Megan

Thank you for you response. 

Here is a picture of the momentary status.

It grew from original 300MB (3 days) to that number and it has been that way since 5 days.

The project is not a single project, but a folder called project that contains all our projects 🙂

So in the web view, cloud and on all other clients that finished syncing, this is the project folder path:

\acme Dropbox\project 

the original path was:

\Dropbox (acme)\project

and that is where the project folder still is on the broken client. So basically, I has not been moved yet.

The size is indeed quiet big, around 4TB. 

Version: 159.4.5870

I hesitate to just reinstall Dropbox, because there have been a lot of changes and I don't know how Dropbox would handle it that there are newer files in \Dropbox (acme)\project while that path does not exist anymore in the cloud.

[ComputerGoesBeeeeeep]

Hey @Megan, any update on this?

Sorry to pressure you, but we need a solution to this problem.

Because I don't know if all the changes are synced to the cloud, I will probably buy and install another HDD, uninstall Dropbox, reinstall Dropbox to this new HDD, copy all files over from the old destination to get all the changes. Despite the 10Gbit Fiber connection, that will probably take days to resync.

I really hope you guys can come up with a solution!

[pacergh]

Ongoing saga of this DropBox nightmare.  Seriously, this is really pushing me towards Google Drive (which we already have) and/or Box.com.  Maybe even Microsoft's OneDrive.

Tried to do some basic work—autogenerate a templated file, move it into a new matter's folder.

AH, but the project management system is no longer linked to DropBox.  Okay, though, Zapier is . . . 

BUT, now Zapier is not linked to the Team Folder and is creating a new folder structure based on the Project Management / Client / Matter structure in my personal folder.

Okay, so maybe I just go ahead and migrate and all my literally thousands of files from the Team Folder that got moved out and into a fully-shared folder in my personal folder.

I mean, we made Groups in DropBox for this, including the automatically-created Everyone group.

Ah, but you can only add auto-generated groups to TEAM FOLDERS!!!!!   GLDMWFMNL:SDNF:KAJNFAD:KLFJAS:KFADJN:FKDSNJFDS:KLDFJ

You have got to be kidding me.  So now I am creating an EVERYONE group that is not the EVERYONE group . . . 

I hate DropBox so much.  It is like they are trying to make me work to migrate away from them.

Remember when DropBox was file-syncing and file-sharing?  Remember when it was the simple solution anyone could use?  Remember when it was the best, simplest, easy-to-use option for that?

Ah, yes, I remember those days . . . now there's Paper and whatever nonsense they have now.

Could be worse—have a matter involving a large company that shared a large set of files using a janky-90s-era solution.

Still, this is becoming unbearable, and I am afraid when I have the time (because owner, CTO, CLO, CEO, all the **bleep** hats guy) we will be migrating.

Which is a bloody shame.  DropBox was literally the first company software tool we purchased (back before DropBox for business; paid for the professional personal DropBox . . . ah, the days).

[ComputerGoesBeeeeeep]

We onboarded Dropbox 5y ago because of unlimited storage and versioning and because of ease of use.

• The change from unlimited versioning to only a year was the first annoyance. This made us buy NAS with Snapshot capability to comply with our retention policy
• Despite 10Gbit Uplink, performance was never great
• "Billing" external users for storage that you share with them just so that they have to buy a subscription is shady. You already calculated the files against my storage, no need to count it twice. 
• Support was always friendly but helpless. Poor support crew has to clean up the mess of management.

But I could overlook all these problems because Dropbox was easy to use and maintain. We liked Dropbox because it made IT life easy. Unfortunately, you guys messed up that part so bad, that it is now easier for us to self-host Nextcloud with S3 Backup. I know this is not the case for businesses without IT, but that this is true for us should really make you rethink your current ways of doing. 

Bye Dropbox. You forgot why people originally liked you. We don't need another password manager, pages, signature, video replay, or any of that. 

[brownashley100]

This just happened to us. 15 users are now all out of sync. Some have had to resync the entire business file structure. 450k files! Others have only 200 or so but it's very slow at 10kb/s. 

Some also have issues where a shortcut has been created in the root directory and the folders have not been split as described in the update information, but it does show correctly on the web application. 

[brownashley100]

Seems this is not a new issue. Our mandatory update happened yesterday and it has totally screwed our company workflow. Clients are still having to resync 2TB+ of data because the old folder could not be used. Others are just resyncing for no apparent reason. 

The local file structure is also inconsistent with the Web App. Some clients have shortcuts, some folders as sub folders, others not. It's a total mess which leaves some of our systems unable to operate. 

Short of reinstalling a fresh Dropbox installation and starting from scratch, is there any other solutions? 

[Megan]

Hey @brownashley100, sorry to hear about that! 

Does this happen with all of your Team members? I'd suggest allowing some time for the app to adjust to the changes, and to become up to date. 

To begin with, you can have a look at this Help Center article. It'll give you an overall idea on the basic troubleshooting when it comes down to syncing issues. 

However, if you want to go through each individual member, and what their app is experiencing, I'd suggest you reach out to our Support about this, in order to have a closer look. 

Thanks a bunch!