Have you had those nagging little pop-ups and messages from Dropbox?

They started with me last week. First about upgrading to the next level, and secondly performing a reinstall for the new version of Dropbox. I ignored the first as I’m barely using half of my current space allocation. I did accept the second, and then the fun began.

Dropbox shut down and went through the usual install and relaunch cycle I expect when installing new versions of applications on the Mac. This time there was a wrinkle. I got the message Dropbox was moving my files to a “secure” location.

What? Where?

Previously the Dropbox folder was located in my Documents folder, and now appears in Finder under the Locations heading. No indication of where, if anywhere, it resides on the hard drive and all you see in Get Info is Dropbox. Not exactly helpful.

Fortunately my technical skills haven’t completely rusted away, so it was into Terminal. A search through the hard drive found Dropbox and all my files in the folder Library -> Cloud Storage.

Satisfied, I had my files somewhere I could find them, I forgot about it until I accessed one of those files. I think it was a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet. At that point I got a warning message and the request to allow the application to access Dropbox files. And this has been a consistent event when I first open a file for the first time in the new Dropbox structure. Grrr!!!

I expect there’s a reason for this change, but it would be nice if Dropbox explained what they were changing and why the need to move all files to some obscure location.

Or it might be some tech-weeny’s bright idea of cool where no-one thought to question the consequences.