Learn how to make the most out of the Dropbox Community here 💙.
Forum Discussion
Sample script to find files that match a file name pattern and rename them?
OS - Windows 10
I recently noticed that there's a sync issues dialog that pops up from time to time--it's not clear what triggers this dialog to open or how to open this dialog manually--and it tells me of files that can't be synced (ie. a disallowed character in the Windows file name scheme like a question mark).
I'm looking for a script I can run that would search my files via the API for these invalid files and then rename those files rather than renaming those files via the web UI.
Please and thank you!
- Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
While Dropbox doesn't offer a pre-built script like this (though maybe someone else in the forum here has something to share), Dropbox does offer an API you can use for programmatically listing and moving/renaming files, among other operations, which you could use to write a script for this. You can find everything you need to get started with the Dropbox API, including documentation, tutorials, and SDKs here. You may be interested in the Getting Started Guide and File Access Guide.
And specifically, you'd probably want to use the /2/files/list_folder[/continue] and /2/files/move_v2 endpoints. By the way, those are links to the documentation for the HTTPS endpoints themselves, but we recommend using one of the official SDKs if possible. Those have corresponding native methods for the HTTPS endpoints.
About Dropbox API Support & Feedback
Find help with the Dropbox API from other developers.
