You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.

Forum Discussion

davidmrofka's avatar
davidmrofka
New member | Level 2
2 months ago

Deleted file message after renaming a folder

I have been reorganizing my folders and renamed a large family photo folder.  I received a message that I'd deleted 17,000 files.  When I look at some of the "deleted" files it seems they are in the ...
  • Rich's avatar
    2 months ago

    davidmrofka wrote:

    I have been reorganizing my folders and renamed a large family photo folder.  I received a message that I'd deleted 17,000 files.


    If you rename the folder within the Dropbox folder on your computer, then receiving a deletion notification can be expected. Look at it like this...

     

    Dropbox doesn't actually see what you're doing in the folder. It only receives notifications from your operating system. When you rename a folder, the OS simply tells Dropbox that FolderA no longer exists, and that FolderB does. To Dropbox, this seems like the deletion of one folder and the addition of another.

     

    Because Dropbox sees it as a deletion, this can sometimes trigger the deletion notice if the sync doesn't occur fast enough, especially when the renamed folder contains a lot of files.

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!