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

Fred P.1's avatar
Fred P.1
New member | Level 1
10 years ago

Roaming Profiles

Everytime I post a request for Dropbox to start supporting Roaming Profiles on Windows 7/8 the message seems to get removed by a moderator. But when I search, there are alot of users asking for this....
Desktop
Setting up the apps
Sync
Windows
  • Stefanie's avatar
    Stefanie
    10 years ago

    Hi Fred,

    Thanks a lot for your feedback.

    Currently, installing Dropbox on either a shared folder or network drive, using redirected folders, and installing Dropbox on roaming profiles are not supported.

    Since Dropbox installs to the folder path %APPDATA%\Dropbox, roaming profiles will cause Windows to mark the Dropbox database files as offline files, sending them back to the server. When this happens, the files are effectively unavailable, causing the Dropbox client to unlink.

    As a workaround, I’d recommend asking your IT administrator to stop the %APPDATA% folder from roaming by following these steps:

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/814592

    Additionally, you should be able to resolve this by setting Windows to ignore the AppData\Roaming\Dropbox location and preventing it from roaming using the following directions: 

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/188692

    If you have used redirected folders to change the location of the Dropbox install, we recommend reinstalling Dropbox and allowing it to install to the default locations.

    Our engineers are also actively working a solution; however, I can't give you an exact timeline when it will become available.

    Best,
    Sofia

Michael P.50's avatar
Michael P.50
New member | Level 1
9 years ago

faster workaround for us was to do the following

 

1. Uninstall Dropbox
2. Open registry (regedit)
3. Find key (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft|Windows|CurrentVersion|Explorer|User Shell Folders”
4. Change volue “AppData” to “%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local”
5. Install Dropbox
6. After installation change the key back to previous value, usually “\\server.example.com\profiles$\[username]\AppData”

This will install dropbox to use AppData\Local instead of AppData\Roaming to store it its database.

About Apps and Installations

Have a question about a Dropbox app or installation? Reach out to the Dropbox Community and get solutions, help, and advice from members.

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!