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Forum Discussion
there's already a folder or file named dropbox
I've had Dropbox installed for several years on a Mac but had not used it for a few years. When I tried launching it, nothing happened, so I downloaded a new copy and installed it. With the installation came a pop-up message "there's already a folder or file named dropbox," at which point I either had to rename the existing Dropbox folder or choose another new one.
That would mean copying several GB of files (needlessly) from a cloud server to an empty folder, with the previous folder no longer synced. I have a very slow cellular-phone based service (all that's available where I live - no fiber optics coming to our neighborhood), and it's metered. This 'feature' essentially makes Dropbox unusable for local storage.
There have been other postings of this problem over at least 5 years, with no solution from Dropbox. A proposed solution is to rename the old Dropbox, let the process start syncing to a new one, stop the process, move the old to the new, and restart Dropbox. As far as I can tell, this just delayed the inevitable process of copying several GB of files. I cannot afford this. Yes, I can always access files on the web, but that makes Dropbox more primitive than most other cloud servers that have native Mac, Windows, and even Linux clients.
- Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Hey BKFC, thanks for posting to our Community today.
We do appreciate your feedback about this. I will definitely pass your comments along to our team.
The process you mentioned, won't re-download all the files from your online account, but will just index the changes.
Of course, since the old Dropbox folder hasn't synced in years, I would definitely recommend that you just create a new Dropbox folder and let the app download everything from the web.
Or as a workaround, during the installation, you can choose the advanced settings, so that you can manually choose the location of your Dropbox folder.
Let me know if you have any questions.Thanks for the comments.
- The sync process worked. As I suspected, the data involved was a few hundred MB not the many GB of a full download.
- During installation, no manual setting was offered to me. Otherwise I would have taken it.
- Of course, since the old Dropbox folder hasn't synced in years, I would definitely recommend that you just create a new Dropbox folder and let the app download everything from the web. As per above, I knew that bringing my local folder up to date would involve a mere fraction of what was stored in the cloud. My whole point in posting is that I'm not in a position of "just starting over and downloading everything." That's the advice I get from Dropbox, from Apple, and other tech companies that assume that everyone has a 100 Mbps fiber optic cable coming to their house. My data rate is about 2 Mbps, and it's metered. I don't have a choice in this matter. Companies, however, do have a choice whether to offer updates and upgrades that don't require massive downloads. Apple did, but no longer. For Dropbox, there's a way to do this, but it's an undocumented workaround, so that tells me the company's priorities.
This is even more inexcusably buggy than mentioned here.
This morning my boot drive started getting read errors. Fortunately I had a bootable clone (100% bitwise duplicate) from just last night. So I swapped it in. My dropbox is on a secondary drive, so that folder didn't change at all.
Apparently it noticed the boot drive had changed because it made me go through setup again. And yes, I chose "advanced options" and pointed to the location of my existing dropbox folder. The first time, it said, "there's already a file or folder named dropbox" and offered to let me choose another folder or rename. I said "choose another location", and selected the same location again. Then it again said there was a dropbox folder there already, but instead of "rename" the second option was "merge", and it offered to let me merge the existing dropbox folder! Success!
Or so I thought, until I hit the "Merge" button. Then it said "there's already a file or folder named dropbox" and offered to let me choose another folder or rename... yes, it just ignored my choice to "merge" and just started all over from the beginning again. A few more tries proved it to be an endless loop. Great work, Dropbox!
So the dropbox app sometimes forces us to start fresh even though we have an existing dropbox folder, while not having any ability to recognize or deal with the fact that sometimes it has just forced is to start fresh with our existing dropbox folder. And if you persist, it pretends to have an option to deal with it, and then when you tell it to use that option, it ignores you and goes back to the beginning.
Why it's absolutely incapable of recognizing that sometimes someone isn't always a brand-new user, and doesn't even allow for this possibility, is an amazing testament to poor software development and user-hostile design.
I can't believe an actual release version of commercial software forces us to rename a folder, create a new folder, then manually delete the new folder and rename the old folder a second time back to what it was already called just a moment ago before the app forced us to rename it... in short, we have to manually trick it into working properly, using a procedure we can only find by getting frustrated enough to come to the support forums and searching for it. Is Dropbox not out of beta yet? Usually these things get ironed out by the QA staff before the product reaches the customers.
Oh, and look: this exact "endless loop" of "merge" and "rename" dialogs was reported as a bug three years ago and Dropbox still hasn't bothered to fix it: https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Apps-and-Installations/Dropbox-Re-installation-Won-t-Use-Previous-Folder/td-p/295505/page/2. Maybe you should stop worrying about integrating AI and building video editing features and all those other things your users don't need and fix the fundamental bugs in your core product features. Then move on to the bloatware that has nothing to do with file syncing.
What a terrible and non-confidence-inspiring system.
