Dropbox sync problem - BUG?

[LeoB]

Set up Joplin on a new PC running Win11. Everything went fine, at first. Joplin synced with Dropbox and all is well.

However, to facilitate some backups and to get out of the persistent OneDrive nagging, I moved my Dropbox folder out of the User location to another folder directly on the C drive that contains all my working files that are automatically backed up.

Dropbox was fine with the move, but it seems the Joplin target folder cannot be moved. It keeps looking at the old (non-existent) folder and I cannot figure out how to get it to look at the new folder.

Error (409): {"error_summary": "path/not_found/...", "error": {".tag": "path", "path": {".tag": "not_found"}}}

I uninstalled and reinstalled Joplin and went through the Dropbox Wizard again, but no change. I thought reinstalling Joplin and connecting it to Dropbox again would direct Joplin to the new Dropbox file location, but it didn't.

I then copied the Dropbox folder (It's not very big) and put it in the default User/Documents folder and tried to sync again. Nothing.

Then, as a last resort, I uninstalled Joplin and Dropbox desktop and did a complete reinstall with Dropbox first and then Joplin. Exact.same.thing.

I then tried using the advanced option of a local file storage. Nope.

Then I uninstalled and reinstalled Joplin, but when I opened the newly installed version I found that it had defaulted to the same setting in the version I had deleted!

Then I uploaded the Joplin folder from my Dropbox account to OneDrive, uninstalled and reinstalled Joplin, and used the sync wizard to OneDrive. SAME ERROR.

I've also seen forum posts of folks who have had problems converting from using Dropbox/OneDrive to Joplin Cloud. I wonder if this all part of a bug in which Joplin gets locked into the first sync path upon INITIAL installation and cannot be redirected.

Fortunately, I still have Joplin running on another old laptop and I've used that to make all possible backups of my data, but this is FRUSTRATING.

Is there any way to tell the app where to look for the files?

[roman_r_m]

If you're really using Dropbox and not file system sync pointed to a local Dropbox folder than you can't (and don't need) to tell it where to find files, they will always be under Apps/Joplin (or something like that).
But then, it shouldn't also care about you moving the folder around because it talks directly to Dropbox servers.

[LeoB]

I only used the file system sync as a test as it would NOT sync with Dropbox. The file system sync did NOT work, either with the original Joplin files in the target folder nor with a specified empty folder. I made about five folders and ten notes as a test to sync to that designated empty file system folder and nothing synced. All I got was an error message.

[roman_r_m]

It' hard to say from your description what is wrong. You could try deleting the profile (export your notes first!) and starting over.
You mention reinstalling but there's a good chance it didn't actually delete the profile.

[LeoB]

Did that, too. BTW, I'm on Win11Pro.

This morning I deleted Joplin (and profile) and Dropbox, including moving the existing Dropbox folder to external storage so it would create a new one.

I then cruised through the registry and deleted any entries that included Joplin or Dropbox. Then rebooted.

I then did a fresh download of Dropbox and let it install the folder/files where it wanted to in User. All the files downloaded fine.

Then did a fresh install of Joplin 2.12.16 and used the sync wizard for Dropbox. Went fine.

Then the same thing:
Completed: 13/09/2023 12:25 (22s)
Last error: Error: POST files/list_folder: Error (409): {"error_summary": "path/not_found/.", "error": {".tag": "path", "path": {".tag": "not_found"}}}