This folder already contains a Dropbox directory. (Dropbox 3.03 on Fedora 21 (x64)

Hello. Thanks for the note Nathaniel - I was a bit out of my depth opening that then!!

My fix for this for anyone else coming across this was to copy both my dropboxes into a new folder, re-install dropbox, and then copy all my files back into the specified dropbox folders again. Didn't take too long and all synced up nicely again now.

yes

I'm experiencing the same issue on Windows 8.

Interesting point John, I was in the middle of downloading 2.10.52 from some random website to test and decided to try the other option of specifying during the installation page than via the preferences.

It works during the installation page rather than the preferences page.

I would have assumed it's the same code path, guess not.

1. I first installed the Dropbox client on Windows. Assume it uses the directory C:\Users\joe\Dropbox in my NTFS partition.
2. Boot into Ubuntu. Edit /etc/fstab so that the NTFS partition which contains the Dropbox directory on Windows is mounted automatically at boot. I assume it is mounted at /media/my-c-drive
3. Install the Dropbox client for Ubuntu. During installation, let it pick its default directory as /home/joe/Dropbox
4. You can see the Dropbox client running in the Panel. Quit it.
5. Delete the Dropbox directory and replace it with a symbolic link to the Dropbox directory on the NTFS Windows partition:

$ rm -rf /home/joe/Dropbox
$ ln -s /media/my-c-drive/Users/joe/Dropbox /home/joe/Dropbox

1. Start the Dropbox client again and you are done. It will use the same directory as that used by Windows for syncing.

Note: As you might have suspected, there is a small problem with this technique. Every time you switch between Windows and Ubuntu, the Dropbox client will re-index the contents of its directory. This will happen in the background, but it will consume CPU, disk and network bandwidth. How irritating this is depends on the size of your Dropbox directory. If your Dropbox directory is large, then this type of sharing can only be a temporary solution for these reasons.

the same problem - reformatted C drive (I have dropbox folder on a separate HD), reinstalled windows and tried rienstalling dropbox and directing it to the previous folder (I do not want to sync 20gb worth of data). New version tels me that there is already a dropbox foleder there, and refuses to sync. I tried the older version which I have, and which did work well in similar situation before, but now I am getting the message that this is an older version and I need to download the new one, and that's after the program has already been installed!

If there is no solution, then I guess I should cancel my paid dropbox account and try some other option for cloud storage

any help?

Same here. Windows 10. I had to uninstall Dropbox. Reinstalled, and now I can't point it to use my existing files, for the reason others have listed here.

This worked in previous versions. I'm in a hotel with a very slow internet conection, and do not have time to re-sync 180Gb of files.

This is crazy, I pay for this service and it wants me to resynch 500GB+ outrageous. It simply needs a link to existing Dropbox folder option how goddamn hard is that. An hour or so of my wasted time trying to fix this for nothing. No serious user keeps their DB folder on their boot drive so this is a massive issue for all your paying users upgrading to Win10.

Same problem... I reinstalled Windows. Now I have to redownload everything and put it in another folder even though I already have a 100% synched folder on another partition... Now I have E:\Dropbox\Dropbox.... Downloading thousands of files...

Three years later this joke is still a joke. I've been using dropbox for years but there are so many options I shouldn't have to do this kind of jury rigging in 2017. How can you take THREE YEARS to patch something so simple?