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Question

file paths for unsynced files that were saved elsewhere, and then relogin to box?

  • March 10, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 91 views

I have a bit of a situation. My local Box workspace wasn’t syncing. The solution given to me by our help person was “copy the unsynced files folder to your desktop, and then logout and then login to box”. I did that, but now I have a directory full of unsynced files -- thousands of them, all in the same directory, with no hint as to the file path where they were originally!  is there some way to figure out how to get those back into the place they belonged in my workspace? 

3 replies

Rona Box
  • Rona Box
  • Community Manager
  • March 11, 2026

Hi ​@andylister100, 

Welcome to Box Community, and we’re glad to assist! 

It indicates that you have already collaborated with one of our team members. Please keep an eye out and we will reach out to you shortly. 

 

Thank you for the continued support in the community!

  • andylister100
  • Author
  • New Participant
  • March 18, 2026

I think our customer help desk person did indeed reach out, but I think was told “there’s nothing we can do”. I’m sort of going my own way with this -- I’ve gotten data recovery software to recover files on my hdd, I’m hoping that I can recover the “data” directory, which I THINK has the .db files needed to find the file paths of where all the files in the unsynced files folder are supposed to go! I was able to open one of those .db files from another computer, and it seems to somehow have the file paths in there. Could you confirm that some combination of the .db files (or some other files that I’m presumably recovering from the “pre-purge” box directory) can give me the file paths that I can use to build a script to send my unsynced files to the directory where they are supposed to go? I would REALLY appreciate that! 

  • andylister100
  • Author
  • New Participant
  • March 20, 2026

There is one more update to this. Amazingly, there is a shadow copy of my drive prior to when box was purged. So I have the users\...box\data and ...\logs and ...\cache files. How can I take this from the shadow copy and put it back where it belongs????

 

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