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Forum Discussion
On Mac, aliases in Dropbox to folders within Dropbox no longer work across devices
I'm having the same problem as what the user Robio describes here:
https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Files-folders/Mac-aliases-within-Dropbox-used-to-work-on-all-shared-devices/m-p/370300
That disc...
I imagine everyone is aware of this, but I still had this thread bookmarked, so I just popped in to say this issue appears to be fixed. I don't recall when it was fixed, but I'm running Dropbox 97.4.467 and aliases are working across devices within shared Dropbox folders.
Now if we can just get them to fix the problem of locked folders/files being not staying locked...
Walter
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHi Tyrrell!
As I'd really need an account and device specific view to better advise on this matter (this is exactly why we had to switch to email communication with Rob as well in the post you quoted), would it be OK if I reached out via your Dropbox email address to have a further look into this with all of our tools available?
Let me know here and we'll take it from there. Thank you!
Hi Folks
I too have exactly the same proble of aliases made between folders in DropBox used to work on MacOSX (for many years) and just recently stopped working. This has to be a generic issue and not specific to any particular user/files, so if there is a solutiuon, it would help teh whole community. Mnay thanks
David
- Daphne
Hi AgardD,
There could be 2 cases for aliases related issues. So generalization isn't good way - the two groups are very different!
The first case is Dropbox limitation related - fact that anything after aliases can't be "live" sync anymore (since some time). If that's your case, you should reorganize files/directories structure, so no more aliases from inside Dropbox directory, pointing outside this dir.
Second case is about aliases residing inside Dropbox directory and pointing within same dir borders. If the aliases are relative, you should not have any troubles. If they aren't, the picture gets more complicated. Such aliases will work only when Dropbox directory is placed on the same place, on all machines in sync literaly (i.e. everything in the path before "Dropbox" is same)!!! In all other cases an aliases created on one machine will (most probably) fail on another machine.
Let say there are 2 machines and on the first, user name is "UserK" - i.e. Dropbox will sit by default on "/Users/UserK/Dropbox" (for example) and on the second, machine user name is "UserL" - i.e. Dropbox will sit by default on "/Users/UserL/Dropbox". Let say in your account you have a directory and a file inside like "SomeDir/example.txt" and you want an alias to example.txt in the account root. One alias variant is:
example.txt -> SomeDir/example.txt
The above will work in all cases - doesn't matter where is created and where used. That's relative alias. Another alias variant is (created on the first machine for example):
example.txt -> /Users/UserK/Dropbox/SomeDir/example.txt
The above will work only on the first machine, but not on second! That's absolute alias. On the second machine actual absolute file position is "/Users/UserL/Dropbox/SomeDir/example.txt", but the alias don't point there. That's where the problem comes from. This issue isn't Dropbox application related, but the way alias gots created (actually the type).
AgardD, You can decide where your problem falls to and gets appropriate actions on. :wink:
Hope this casts some extra light.
The one thing that has not yet been made clear to me by Dropbox support is whether or not this is now expected behavior. No one has said one way or another whether Dropbox expects synced Mac aliases to use relative paths...
>alias /users/rob/Dropbox/2019 Budget.xlsx alias
>points to target users/rob/Dropbox/Budgets/2019 Budget.xlsx on ROB's computer
>but points to target users/joe/Dropbox/Budgets/2019 Budget.xlsx on JOE's computer
...which is what was happening a few months ago...
...or if Dropbox has been changed so that now the alias follows absolute paths (i.e., if the path includes /users/rob/, it won't work on Joe's computer.
They've asked me to unlink/relink my Dropbox "to ensure it's working correctly" but first I need to know which of the two behaviors they consider correct.
In the mean time, I've found a workaround: Each user creates their own aliases locally. It's far less convienient because User A has to tell User B where to find everything they might want to alias. But it's better than having to hunt.
