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Forum Discussion
Alias Folders
I had to re-sync Dropbox recently and when I sync the app on my iMac Dropbox creates locked alias folders for Desktop, Downloads and Documents. Do I have to wait for the files to sync and the localize the files from Desktop, Downloads and Documents?
I want these folders to be on my local computer not aliases that link to Dropbox
paulpeterson hey paul! did you ever get this figured out? I am having the same exact problem and I cannot seem to figure out how to solve it yet
somehow my three main folders (desktop, documents and downloads) that used to live locally on my user macbook laptop were turned into aliases/locked folders folders by dropbox. Those folders now seem to live in Dropbox making my local folders aliases or shortcuts to the original folders that now have been hijacked by dropbox to live in the dropbox account. I do not want that. It's the same exact thing Paul mentioned in his first post. Now i'm trying to figure out how to undo this mess because I don't even use Dropbox or have paid for it ever. Not sure how this happened.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey paulpeterson, thanks for posting on our Community today!
It seems that when you re-synced the Dropbox application, you enabled the computer backup feature.
If you don't want these desktop folders to be backed up to Dropbox, you can disable it by following the steps here.
Just make sure that syncing is finished before you disable the feature.
Let me know if you have any questions.Thanks for your response @hannah
I definitely do want these backed up to Dropbox but not sure like with other Dropbox folders that are backed up they are alias folders and not local folders?
- HannahOh, it's great that you'd like the desktop folders to be backed up!
And that's kind of how the backup feature works.
Your actual desktop folders are in your Dropbox folder and the original folders serve as shortcuts to the folders in the Dropbox folder.
If you ever want to disable the feature and move the folders back to their original locations, you can follow the steps in the article I gave you above.
