Stone Studio

One major drawback of Dropbox is that it only syncs files placed inside the My Dropbox folder. Here’s how to get around that limitation.

In order to sync files and folders that live outside the My Dropbox folder, you need to create a symbolic link between the My Dropbox folder and the folder on your drive that you want to sync. Symbolic links are sort of like shortcuts, so if you had a folder called SyncMe that lived on your desktop, you’d create a symbolic link that made it appear as though SyncMe also lived inside the My Dropbox folder. This process varies depending on your operating system.

Windows:

Use either the JUNCTION utility from Sysinternals, or the MKLINK command built in to Windows Vista and Server 2008, for example:

 junction ”C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Dropbox\DesiredFolder” ”C:\Path\To\DesiredFolder”

 mklink /D ”C:\Users\Steve\Documents\Dropbox\DesiredFolder” ”C:\Path\To\DesiredFolder”

Or, if you prefer a GUI, install Link Shell Extension.

OS X or Linux

Use the ln command, for example:

 ln -s /path/to/desired-folder ~/Dropbox/desired-folder 

This works with files too:

 ln -s /path/to/desired-file ~/Dropbox/desired-file 

Note that an Alias file or folder does not work.