How to Migrate from Dropbox to OneDrive

A cloud drive helps access data from any geographical location, and is a highly secure and reliable mode. Some of the popular cloud drives these days are Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc. Each one of these has their own pros and cons.

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OneDrive is integrated with the Windows system as it is developed by Microsoft itself. This is the reason many people these days tend to prefer it over other cloud drives. This article teaches how to safely migrate your precious data from Dropbox to OneDrive with ease. The first solution works regardless of the operating system, whereas the second solution only works on certain platforms where both OneDrive, and Dropbox apps work.

Solution 1: Cloud Transfer

Cloud transfer is the most efficient method in transferring data from Dropbox to OneDrive. This method consumes no bandwidth from the user’s Internet connection, it costs relatively less time compared to migrating files from the user’s own system and is very user friendly. It is platform independent as data is migrated remotely, and finally it uses a service provided by Microsoft, which means it is highly reliable and secure. Mover used to be an independent entity, but recently it’s purchased by Microsoft; hence it’s now a part of Microsoft ecosystem.

Navigate to  https://app.mover.io/transfer/new

Login to the through your Microsoft account.

In section one, click on Authorize New Connector, and select Dropbox. There are two Dropbox connectors, one is for consumers, and the other one is for Business users. If you have no idea on which plan you are currently on, navigate to https://www.dropbox.com/account/plan, and check your current plan. If it says Business, then select the Business connector, and if it says Basic, Plus, Family, then select the Single User connector. Login through your Dropbox account and grant Mover with the concerning privileges.

In the next section, select Authorize New Connector once again and select OneDrive. If you have an Office 365 account, then select OneDrive for Business, and if you have no Office 365 subscription, then select OneDrive Consumer.  Azure Blob Storage is useful if you have an Azure service.  The Office 365 option is not really useful as OneDrive for Business can be used for Office 365 subscribers as well.

Once all the connectors have been configured, refresh the mover page. It will show step 1 with Dropbox, and step 2 with OneDrive. Click on Manage on both instances, and select Connect as seen in the following screenshot.

Once the connection has been established, it will show all the files in both OneDrive, and Dropbox. Now the migration can be done. However, the mover service migrates all the files in one cloud storage to Microsoft owned cloud storages instead of specific files.

Once everything seems good, click Start Copy in the Step 3 section. It will migrate all the files from Dropbox to OneDrive swiftly.  If there are a large number of files at Dropbox it might take a while 

Once the migration process is over, Mover will send an email notification to the email the user used to register on the website/ or on Microsoft and inform them about the operation being a success.

Solution 2: Sync through Local File System

Syncing data through a local file system is quite useful to migrate certain files, and automate file synchronization. In the previous example with Mover, every root folder along with their files will be migrated to the destination location. This process has to be done over and over again whenever a file or a folder is added to Dropbox. In terms of productivity, this might not be ideal if someone wants to use both Cloud Drives without migrating all of their data from Dropbox. This solution is for those who want to keep both drives, and migrate files from Dropbox to OneDrive from time to time, or more often, automate the process.

Open up File Explorer, and then check whether the Navigation pane is opened. If it’s not opened, then enable it through the View option.

Once the Navigation pane has been opened, scroll through the list to find both Dropbox, and OneDrive folders. Since this guide is about migrating Dropbox files to OneDrive, it assumes both folders already exist in the file system.

Open up both the OneDrive, and Dropbox apps from the start menu. OneDrive is already a part of Windows 10 operating system; hence it is not needed to install it, but Dropbox app has to be installed if it doesn’t exist in the operating system. Download Dropbox from this URL https://www.dropbox.com/.

Once Both apps are installed, open them via the Start menu.

Navigate to the Dropbox folder, copy all the data you want to move to OneDrive. Now navigate to the OneDrive folder and paste all the copied files, and folders. As long as both apps are open, they will sync their status with their cloud systems, which means all the files that used to be in Dropbox will be migrated to OneDrive once the sync process concludes successfully. If you want to remove files from Dropbox after they have been pasted in OneDrive, migrating, it is better to use the cut option rather than copy, because cut moves files.