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Setup Multiple Dropbox Accounts on Windows

Vincent

27 May 2014 • 2 min read

Dropbox is no doubt a great service to share files across different devices and between people, but what if you have separate accounts for work and personal use? There's a way to run multiple instances on the same Windows user.

Before I get started, personally I would advise against following this guide to circumvent free account size limits. Pricing for Dropbox may not be the most economical out there, however there are plenty of alternate services like Google Drive and MediaFire which are worth considering (both recently introduced pretty reasonable new pricing).

  • First you should have a Dropbox account set up and running on your main Windows user. It can be normally installed and files synced to any directory you like.
  • Next create a new Windows user or use an existing one to install Dropbox again on and make sure it has some sort of password (for Win8 it could be just a local/normal user, no admin rights needed) - do be aware this alternate user isn't shared with anyone else if you have sensitive files.
  • Log into the alternate user account then download and install Dropbox. Afterwards make sure the folder is placed somewhere your main Windows account can access, so a path like C:\Dropbox would work.

  • Now you can log out of the alternate user account and head back on to your main one. Then create a shortcut to the executable (.exe) of your second Dropbox install, and it'll be somewhere in the AppData folder and might be hidden for you (see how to reveal here). E.g. C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\bin\Dropbox.exe - the USERNAME would be what you used to create the secondary Windows account.
  • Once you found the executable, right-click it and select Send To > Desktop (create shortcut). Now right-click the newly created shortcut that's on the Desktop and click Properties. In the Target text field add the following to the front of what should be a file path runas /user:USERNAME /savecred (note that the USERNAME should match file path you looked up in the previous step). The end result should be similar to the following runas /user:USERNAME /savecred C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\bin\Dropbox.exe.

  • After applying the changes made to the shortcut, double-click it and it'll prompt you for a password in the command prompt. Enter the password you used for the other Windows user account.
  • If everything is done properly you should see two Dropbox icons in your system tray area.

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