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I use dropbox and very happy with it.

The only drawback I have with it is that I must place the files I want to share in the My Dropbox folder.

Is there anyway I can place the files in another folder on my PC and automatically sync between dropbox folder and another folder on my local pc?

Sathyajith Bhat
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amateur
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2 Answers2

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You can use a symlink to 'mirror' the contents of one folder with your Dropbox.

Open a command prompt or terminal. On Windows (I think starting from XP) you can use the command mklink.exe to achieve this, on Linux systems you can use the command ln -s. I'm not familiar with the commandline arguments by mind but you can look up the syntax with mklink.exe /? or man ln, or use Google. :P

You can also move the Dropbox folder to a different location in the settings but you will not be able to rename My Dropbox.

Vivelin
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    mklink /d "<path to alternate folder>" "<path to>\My Dropbox" (You have to run the command prompt as Administrator) – raven Jul 02 '10 at 13:13
  • BTW, this command has been available since Windows 2000, although it was called linkd.exe. They reworked it, and renamed it, as of Windows Vista. – raven Jul 02 '10 at 13:24
  • I've done this and it's been great for Dropbox. – Hondalex Jul 02 '10 at 15:19
  • Thanks raven. (I usually mix up the two, usually resulting in an error so I have to switch the two folders xD) – Vivelin Jul 05 '10 at 07:44
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It is possible, but it requires that you have a filesystem in NTFS format. You'll need an external tool, Link Shell Extension to make links and drop it as junctions.

So the steps are:

  • Install Link Shell Extension
  • Browse to any folder you’d like to link with My Dropbox. Right click on the folder and select Pick Link Source.
  • Goto the location where My Dropbox is and right click it and select Drop As.. => Junction.
  • Thats it. Now open My Dropbox and you'll see that there's a new folder named Junction to, click it and you'll see the exact copy of the files/folders you had in the source location. Now just keep working on those folders and they’ll keep syncing to your Dropbox.
Sathyajith Bhat
  • 61,800