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Forum Discussion
New named Dropbox structure
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.
recently there was an update on dropbox, which auto created a personal folder. it has caused a lot of problem for me and my users.
Is there ways we could remove this feature? some of the file path have moved to the personal folder.
Does anyone have any solution to this?
I have been postponing this again for the last several months. Usually I can go 6 weeks out on postponing. Now I cannot go later than 7/31/24. It looks like I am being forced to do this upgrade.
I don't use Teams Folders and ran the report and it noted that no folder names will be exposed. The report noted "All clear-there aren't any subfolder names and paths that will become visible to team members after...."
One concern is file path. With this new structure, since the username will be added to the path. This will increase the path another 10 to 12 characters depending on user.
Is there a DB report to see file path length and flag any user files that may be too long? I want to make sure I do not have an issue with the path being longer than 260 characters.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hi there, ap support, thanks for taking the time to post to our Community.
I moved your post to a thread that has lots of info relevant to your inquiry.
Make sure to check it out and if you have any questions, please let us know.
My company has been having an issue with Dropbox for the last month.
My company has one large dropbox folder, within contains many other folders. There is one folder all employees have access to. It is called Employee Resources. About a month ago, our owner and myself (an admin) had new folders show up with our names on them. And then certain folders that normally live in our one large dropbox folder were moved into these folders. And we are unable to move them out. It says the folder is read-only. And we do not have the permission to move anything.
I reached out to Dropbox support and they were not remotely helpful. Has this happened to anyone? Does anyone have ANY insight?
- Hannah
Hey mpraymond511, it sounds like your Dropbox Business team is going through this change.
With this folder structure, you can move a shared folder from the member folder (folder with your name) to the team space (the space outside the member folder, that the whole team can access).
However, some requirements need to be met:
1. The user needs to have edit access to the folder they are trying to move. To check this:
a. Click Share to the right of the folder.
b. See Can edit to the right of the individual user or group.
2. The Manage access setting needs to be set to Folder members. To check this, follow the steps below:
a. Click Manage to the right of the folder.
b. Click Folder settings.
c. See Folder members from the dropdown next to Manage access.
3. The folder is owned by someone on the same team as the person who’s moving it into the team space.
I hope this helps!
I have not gotten a new email that this change is pending and hope it does not happen. However, in my Admin Console under Content I see a banner message:
"Review folder names and make any changes before Feb 2
After the Feb 2 update, members with access to a subfolder are shown its path to the top-level team folder. Create a report to review folder names and members’ access to them. We’ll email you when it’s in your Dropbox Business reports folder."There is no setting anywhere with a calendar Like there was previously to postpone it.
I logged into my work Dropbox account this morning and noticed all of my work folders were put into an overarching folder under my name under my company account. Now I'm being notified that the links to my work folders and projects are saying the folders and content don't exist, but I can still access them manually from my account. Can someone help explain what happened and what I can do to make those links work again? Why did this happen?
- Rich
Super User II
ckq_bally wrote:
I logged into my work Dropbox account this morning and noticed all of my work folders were put into an overarching folder under my name under my company account. ... Why did this happen?
Your Dropbox team received the file system update. Your team admin would have received notice that this was going to happen.
... links to my work folders and projects are saying the folders and content don't exist, but I can still access them manually from my account. Can someone help explain what happened and what I can do to make those links work again?When you link to a file or folder within an application, most applications use the full path to the linked file. If the linked files move or change paths, the links will break and the application will be unable to find the linked files. In such a case, you need to update the links in the files so they point to the new location.
The latest update (October 2023) has reorganised our folders. Shared business folders have been moved into Personal folders, not by anyone in the organisation but by the update. We would like an option to revert to the old folder structure. The folders should never have been moved; it's not Dropbox's data and Dropbox have no rights to decide how it should be filed.
Hello,
It appears my root folder is no longer "/", but is now a system-created folder called "/CheerSounds/" (or in other words, "/<username>/"), and that now appears as the root of all connected client apps. I can't make sense of it, but it has created some big issues for our workplace.
Our log shows that a series of policy changes and folder changes occurred at 02:06 est on 11/26 which have interrupted our business operations in the most severe way. The logs show that the changes were made by user unknown and location unknown.
On our account, username "CheerSounds", it seems that the contents of our root folder "/" has been relocated to "/CheerSounds/" . We are unsure of how this folder was created; there is no log of it ever happening. It's permissions are set to "Only Me". More interesting, our connected dropbox client apps (mac, windows, linux) can not see the actual contents of "/" any longer, instead they only show the contents of "/CheerSounds/" as if that was the root! Was a system-wide change made to tell client-connected devices that the root is actually "/<user-name>/" ?
Also concerning, our largest and most important folder "/CheerSounds v2/" now exists in both the actual root "/CheerSounds v2/" and in the new folder "/CheerSounds/CheerSounds v2/". It appears the moving/copying of this folder failed and left only a partial copy in "/CheerSounds/CheerSounds v2/". Our client systems have all automatically synchronized to "/CheerSounds/CheerSounds v2/" , leading them to believe that the failed copy is actually the removal of hundreds of thousands of files, which all of our client computers have now aligned to. This resulted in the removal of hundreds of thousands of files from all client devices. The client devices indicate they are "up to date".
My question is: was a change made to create a virtual root for client devices?
I cannot explain or understand why the "/<username>/" folder was created by "unknown user" from "unknown location" or why all of my files have been moved into it, or why that new path appears as the root folder for all of my dropbox connect clients.
As far as why the file copy may have failed: We have incredibly long filenames on some of our media, often being exactly the limit of 256 characters of a file path. My guess ... is that Dropbox intended to move the old root "/" into "/CheerSounds/" which would now (somehow) the be root for dropbox client applications...but the file copy of "/CheerSounds v2/" failed due to some of the file paths within that folder being 256 characters long with no room to spare for the new, longer path of "/CheerSounds/CheerSounds v2/........"
Regardless of what happened, our entire office of multimedia projects is left in a compromised stated which I must resolve Asap! Any and all insight is appreciated so that I may remedy this and not impact the entire office for long.
Thanks,
Carmine Silano
CheerSounds MusicUPDATE: this is apparently a byproduct of the new Team update that was pushed out. The root was relocated into a user folder; the root of that folder is now served to clients as the "root" (a virtual root). The copy of my v2 folder failed for reasons unknown at this time (I believe it to be file path lengths that were hitting the 256char limit, but that is still to be explicitly tested).
Thanks.
- Megan
Hi cheersounds, thanks for taking the time to post in our Community!
I merged your post under this thread, where others have also posted in regards to what you mentioned.
Feel free to have a look at Walter's response right here, and let me know if you have any questions.
Thanks!
So with this new 2022 version, apparently in the root business folder, a new user folder is created.
Trying to delete this is impossible, it keeps syncing back.
Even to deselect the folder in the sync settings is not possible.
It is pretty useless folder, because I know what my username is, and the files that I want to sync will not be shared anyhow with the team and they need to be organized in a better strucutre that my user name.
Please have the possibility to remove or deselect the folder for sync of the user name
It appears Dropbox does not want to solve this. Just installed on a new machine and the root name folder is now different from years ago.
Dropbox (<business name>)
<business name> Dropbox
We have many scripts that are based on the original folder path and now it is broken, this means migrating the whole team is now on hold until all scripts are fixed and even when preparing their new machine can't be rollout, it needs to be tested it all works.
Why the personal Dropbox account is sllowed to change and the business not? I would say, the businesss acount is generating more revenue so such capability is easy to implement, just copy the code from the personal dropbox code.
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!
Yes, everyone in some form or other.
The initial dropbox file hierarchy is all over the place.
This morning I formatted my hard drive and start the sync process from scratch with a fresh install. This has solved the issue for me.
I was in a fortunate position to know which files to remove and back up elsewhere prior to the wipe. Others will find difficulty in this, so might experience data loss if we take this approach as not everything is uploaded.
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!
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.
- Rich
Structuraldood wrote:
Is there truly no method to opt out of this change in naming convention?
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.
