Moving Dropbox folder blocked

[donheff]

I have been on a bit of a journey with Dropbox since I upgraded to 2T.  I initially synched about 300GB from an external drive to the C: drive by mistake.  I seem to have that resolved.  Then I moved the Dropbox folder to the external drive in the hope that if my previous problem recurred the files would end up there and not on C:

Now I have an issue with a key app that stores it's data on Dropbox.  It still works fine on my mobile devices but the copy on my PC finds the path to the external volume invalid.  I tried to move the Dropbox folder back to my user folder on C: but the Dropbox app says there is already a Dropbox folder in that location.

Any suggestions about what to do next?  I was considering uninstalling Dropbox and staring over before.  Is it time to do that now?

[Walter]

Hey @donheff, sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

Before taking any drastic actions, can you please clarify where your Dropbox folder resides at the moment? You can see this from the sync tab in the app's preferences. 

A screenshot of the error the 3rd party app you mentioned is giving you as well as the Dropbox app's status and version as shown in your system tray would also help.

Thanks!

[donheff · Accepted solution]

Thanks Walter.  I believe I have finally solved my Dropbox problems -at least to the point that I have a workable solution.  As might be expected, this all likely resulted from my lack of understanding about how Dropbox works.  I have used the free account for many years and kept a couple of small encrypted files on it that I want to be available from multiple devices.  When I started to pile up vast amounts of data from astrophotography I decide it was time to store some of this stuff in the cloud.  

In any event, I set all files to be stored online only and then uninstalled and reinstalled Dropbox.  I put it back on my C: drive.  A Dropbox chat technician explained that, even though the files are set to online only, Dropbox has to temporarily copy files from external volumes to the volume it is installed in (C:, again in my case) until they are uploaded.  Accordingly, I gradually added external files back into the fold and now I believe it is set to sync the files I want backed up from my external volume.

I don't know why my third party app continued to find a local Dropbox folder after I moved it.  In my brief search I couldn't see it.  The app is now happy with Dropbox back in it's familiar location so I am OK.

[Walter]

I'm happy to hear you managed to sort this out in the end and thanks for keeping me in the loop too @donheff 

See you around the Community and have a lovely week ahead! 

[KimiZ]

How did you move the folder from Dropbox onto an external drive? Am having a devil of a time - even after the folder has been permanently deleted off of Dropbox and now only resides on my laptop hard drive - I operate on a Mac -

Help with this is truly appreciated - Kimi

[donheff]

The question was: how did you move the dropbox folder to an external drive.

I don't remember specifically.  I had either Googled it or found a reference in a Dropbox forum.  IIRC, I eventually found a "Move Dropbox Folder" link and just followed a few steps.  But, I concluded later that I did not want it on an external drive.  Instead I reinstalled the app and located the folder on my C: drive and set it to keep all files in the cloud.

[KimiZ]

Were you able to move a folder now on your C drive to an external drive?