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Boscastle's avatar
Boscastle
Explorer | Level 4
6 years ago

Cannot preview or open .lnk files from my account on my new device, what happened?

Hi, I have been using Dropbox happily with windows 7. My computer recently died and my new computer has windows 10, all different to me... Anyhow, I downloaded a Dropbox link onto my desktop, when ...
Third Party Integrations
  • Daphne's avatar
    Daphne
    6 years ago
    Hey again, Boscastle - thanks for your reply!
     
    So if you don’t have the actual files on your computer that would be opened via the shortcuts then you will not be able to open them on the new computer. So I understand that the shortcuts were created by mistake when copying files into the Dropbox folder on the old computer, is that right?
     
    What you will need to do in this case is move the actual files over to your Dropbox folder so that they can be opened on the new computer. I would recommend to select the files on the old computer, and then right click them to correctly copy and then paste the files into the Dropbox folder. This will ensure that the files are copied over rather than shortcut links.
     
    Also, if all the files currently in your Dropbox folder are all .lnk shortcut files, then I would suggest you can just simply delete these before copying over the files correctly to avoid confusion. In doing this, all the changes will sync over to your new device and you should be able to open the files correctly.
     
    Let me know how you get on with this - Cheers!
Boscastle's avatar
Boscastle
Explorer | Level 4

Hi Daphne,

Thank you for the advice.

I think you are probably right, however my new computer had no files on it at all,so it was something I did when trying to download dropbox to my new computer.

I have looked at every item that is now linked to dropbox on my computer and the same problem remains, except now I seem to have duplicated that file too.

Do you know how I could change the file name via my drop box account or how I can put things back to how they were prior to downloading Dropbox to my new compuer?

Many thanks

Daphne's avatar
Daphne
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
6 years ago
Hey again, Boscastle - thanks for your reply!
 
So if you don’t have the actual files on your computer that would be opened via the shortcuts then you will not be able to open them on the new computer. So I understand that the shortcuts were created by mistake when copying files into the Dropbox folder on the old computer, is that right?
 
What you will need to do in this case is move the actual files over to your Dropbox folder so that they can be opened on the new computer. I would recommend to select the files on the old computer, and then right click them to correctly copy and then paste the files into the Dropbox folder. This will ensure that the files are copied over rather than shortcut links.
 
Also, if all the files currently in your Dropbox folder are all .lnk shortcut files, then I would suggest you can just simply delete these before copying over the files correctly to avoid confusion. In doing this, all the changes will sync over to your new device and you should be able to open the files correctly.
 
Let me know how you get on with this - Cheers!
  • Boscastle's avatar
    Boscastle
    Explorer | Level 4
    6 years ago

    Hi, thank you for the reply.

    I spoke to the computer person in the end and he said that it looked likes I had only copied the link from my old computer to Dropbox, so I have asctually lost everything :-0

    Lesson learned and thank you for helping.

     

    This thread is closed due to inactivity. Please feel free to create a new topic here. 

     

     

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