Dropbox is a great tool, but recently I lost the Public folder on my desktop and couldn’t find a way to get it back. In this article we’ll go over how to recreate a public folder in DropBox and also how to sync back so if you’ve lost your Public folder on your desktop, but you HAVE it on the DropBox website, you can get it back.
1. I Lost My DropBox Public Folder. How Do I Create a New One?
If you’ve lost your DropBox Public folder (and you are not going to undelete what you’ve lost — e.g. you want to start over with a Public folder or you’ve never had one), then this step is easy. Simply navigate to your Dropbox folder and create a new folder called “Public”. Naturally you don’t use the ” ” and you need to make sure that the “P” in Public is capitalized. That’s it.
2. I have a Public folder on the Dropbox Website, but I Don’t Have it On My Desktop Dropbox Folder.
Yeah — it happened to me, too. This is a sync issue and I was about to reinstall Dropbox and start over until I found this solution.
A. Go to the Dropbox icon in your system tray (e.g access the Dropbox application), right-click to bring up the menu below, and then left-click on “Preferences…”
B. Once you’ve clicked “Preferences…” you will be in the Preferences dialog box. Look at the top right and click the “Advanced” button (it looks like a wheel/cog). Go halfway down and click “Selective Sync”
3. Once that’s done you will be in the Selective Sync dialog box. Make sure that you check the box next to “Public” (and Photos if you want, as well). Once you’ve checked the boxes, click “Update” at the bottom (not shown) and the Public folder from the Dropbox website will now sync to your desktop.
Happy DropBoxing!