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Forum Discussion
Desktop and Documents folders disappeared from my connected Mac computers
All the files from the 'Desktop' and 'Documents' folders of both my home laptop (macbook air) & my office desktop (mac mini) used to automatically sync into my dropbox, and I could view it from the D...
After having worked perfectly for quite some time, I all of a sudden can't view my Mac Desktop in the Dropbox. It seems that the iMac folder is now completely empty and even when I look in the selective sync folder it's empty. What do I do to get it back?
Rich
Super User II
Super User II
lasses wrote:
After having worked perfectly for quite some time, I all of a sudden can't view my Mac Desktop in the Dropbox. ... What do I do to get it back?
You were most likely using the older version of Backup feature which MOVED your key folders (such as your Desktop) into your Dropbox folder so they could sync. This meant that those folders were visible on other computers, the mobile app and within the Files section of the Dropbox website. This wasn't a backup. Backups shouldn't be accessed... they're meant for disaster recovery. It was really just a file sync made to sound like a backup.
The new update to Backup behaves a bit more like an actual backup. Instead of moving the folders to the Dropbox folder so they sync, Dropbox backs them up in place and they're stored in a new section of your account online. You can access this area in your web browser.
If your intent is to be able to access the Desktop folder across multiple devices or the mobile app, you'll need to see if there's a way to relocate the folder into the Dropbox folder yourself. On Windows this is easy. There's an option on the folder to specify its location and it can easily be moved to the Dropbox folder. I don't know if that's possible or as easy to do on a Mac.
