Struggling with Dropbox syncing everything? Learn how to make Dropbox only sync certain folders and manage storage wisely. Whether you need Dropbox to only sync one folder or multiple, this guide covers step-by-step instructions for selective syncing.
Quick Navigation:
Only want to sync specific folders on my other device
I have all my files in Dropbox on my PC. I want to "some" of them, not all of them on my laptop. When I downloaded Dropbox on the laptop, I ended with "all" files on the laptop.
Can someone please let me know how to remove those files I don't want on the laptop? Or do I have to start all over? And then if I have to start all over, how do I only get the files I want? Thank you!
- Question from dropboxforum.com
If you’re using Dropbox to sync files between the Dropbox server and your computer, you might encounter some problems like the above. To sync certain folders to computer, or sync some of folders to Dropbox, try the following solutions.
To let Dropbox only sync certain folders, you can try the Dropbox Selective Sync to only sync folders to your computer instead of them all. Here are the steps:
1. Please install the Dropbox desktop app on your computer you’d like to sync some of folders, and log in to your account.
2. Tap the Dropbox icon on the system tray, click the profile image > Preferences.
3. Tap Sync on the left side, then hit Select folders behind the Selective sync.
4. Tick the folders you’d like to download to your computer, and hit Update to sync specific folders in Dropbox.
However, you might encounter the problem Dropbox selective sync not working, or conflicted, click the link to get solutions to fix.
Dropbox selective sync settings only for one device, if you want to do that for other devices, set it up for all your computers.
If you would like to sync Dropbox all folders on one computer, and sync certain folders to another computer, downloading some of folders to the destination computer is another option. Here is how to do that:
1. Please log in to your Dropbox account from the webpage on the dedicated computer.
2. Find the folders you’d like to download, and hit Download.
3. It will start downloading the folders and store them in a Dropbox.zip file, uncompress them and move them to a location on your computer to keep them safe.
This also applied for Dropbox only download certain folders. You can learn how to sync Dropbox folders to computer easily.
Uploading some foldrs to Dropbox instead of all folders can be your demand, so, how to do that easily? Here comes the simple steps:
1. Go to the Dropbox website, open a folder to save the uploaded files.
2. Click Create > Upload > Folder, then choose the folders to upload.
3. Now hit the Upload button to upload certain folders to Dropbox.
In fact, if you would like to let Dropbox sync certain folders to another account, sharing Dropbox folders can be the solution. Here is how to share a Dropbox folder with another account:
1. Go to the Dropbox website and click All files on the left to show all.
2. Choose a folder you want to share, and click Share selected from the top menu.
3. You have three options, Add people, Copy link or Transfer a copy, choose Add people here.
4. Input the email address of another Dropbox account, then click Share.
5. On another computer, log in to the another Dropbox account, you can find the shared Dropbox folder in Shared.
Repeat the process to sync certain folders in Dropbox.
If you don’t want to use the above ways to let Dropbox only sync certain folders, you can use external hard drive to copy some folders to the external hard drive, then connect it to another computer, move them to a safe location. Alghough it’s easy to do, you can’t access the up-to-date files once the files get updated.
It’s probably you have multiple clouds, including Dropbox, so migrating files from Dropbox to another cloud is an common operations. But what to do if you just let Dropbox only sync certain folders to another cloud? Don’t worry, It’s wise to use the powerful online multiple cloud storage manager, called MultCloud.
Here are main reasons to use MultCloud to sync certain folers in Dropbox:
How to let Dropbox only sync certain folders to Google Drive for example:
1. Log in to your MultCloud account after registering.
2. Click Add Cloud, and choose Dropbox, then follow the guide to grant access to Dropbox. Add Google Drive in the same way.
3. Select Cloud Sync, choose certain folders in Dropbox as the source, and a location in Google Drive as the destination.
4. Set up sync settings and then click Sync Now to let Dropbox sync certain folders to Google Drive.
There are some sync settings you can configure before syncing:
Until now, you might have mastered how to sync certain folders in Dropbox to another account or computer. To protect files in Dropbox, you can backup Dropbox to OneDrive, or other clouds for data protection. With MultCloud, you can also download videos and photos from Instagram, etc.