I've run out of storage and its because of others sharing folders with me. How do I get out of shared folders?
You definitely have one or more shared folders that are taking up the majority of your space. Go to your Files page and if you don't see a Members header column, click the Type or Modified column and select Members. Then look for any folder that looks like this:
If you find any, hover your cursor over the folder to make the Share button appear, then click it. From there you can remove your access to the folder and remove it from your account.
Welcome to our Forum @stoes40toes!
From what I understand you have run out of quota (available space on your Dropbox account) and you'd like to remove your access from shared folders to free up some space.
Keep in mind that you can always see how much space you currently use on your account's plan page and in general, when your Dropbox account is over quota then only syncing stops. Nothing will be removed and syncing will resume should you bring your account under quota again. There are a few ways to do this:
1. Upgrade your account. You can take a look here for more information.
2. Increase your quota using referrals bonuses or other promotions.
3. Leave any shared folders that put you over quota by removing your access to them following the steps outlined on this page.
4. Move files that don't need to sync out of your Dropbox folder using the desktop application on a connected computer.
Hope this helps and let me know if you have any more questions about any of these.
I have deleted files of my own, PLUS disconnected my access from shared folders--and still my free dropbox is full. It's as though I haven't deleted anything at all (and yes, they're all still present under deleted folders.)
I am an infrequent user, don't want to add a paid account to my monthly bills, and don't have the time to chat a lot online about Dropbox features & problems. I just want to delete unused files to free up some space in my free account. But no matter how many files I delete my Dropbox account remains too full to create new files, and anything I do next requires me to upgrade to a paid account.
How do I delete files to free up space for myself to use?
As I said, I have deleted most of my files, and have removed access to all files that have been shared with me. Still, my space says it's used up. My files take up 476 MB (which is actually MORE than before I deleted files--so must be including my deleted folders?? I don't know) and 2.26 GB in shared files. (Even though I no longer have any access to shared files.) So this looks like Dropbox just wants me to start paying no matter what?
Hey @KH-MLC - thanks for using out Forum to post your question!
Did you get the chance to review Mark's suggestion? Did this work for you now?
No. At this point I have removed all my shared folders. I've reduced my use of Dropbox to become almost pointless. And my Dropbox is still full and I can't do anything unless I upgrade to a pay-per month.
All my deleted shared files are still in Show Deleted Files, but no way to "empty the trash," so to speak. So my account remains full.
Deleted files and folders don't count against your storage quota, so there's no need to "empty the trash" as you say. If your Plan page is showing that you're still over your storage quota, then there are still files in your Dropbox that are taking up space.
Look at your Plan page and find this section. What does it show you? Provide a screenshot if you're able.
OK at this point I'm starting to feel a bit stupid...
Yes, all the advice from this forum solved my problem. Thanks to all!
Thanks for letting us know about this @stoes40toes - glad to hear you got this resolved.
Should you ever come up with any other Dropbox questions, let us know and we'll be glad to help!
Have a wonderful weekend!
How does one become "on the same Dropbox Business team" as other users? Apparently that's another solution to this problem...
As I understand it, the folks sharing the folder with me that is making me over quota ARE on my business team, but Dropbox doesn't seem to think so. How does it make this determination, exactly?
P.S. Why isn't dropbox part of the spell-check dictionary of this forum's spell-check feature?
I'm getting exactly the same problem. Someone shared a folder with me a couple of months ago. That's used some of my quota. However, I'm done with the file now, but I was nervous about deleting it in case it deleted the folder in the cloud and they still needed it.
But having read this thread, it seemed safe to detach it - but having done that, I no longer have access to the folder (which is fine), but it's still showing exactly the same usage on the https://www.dropbox.com/account/plan page, although on the https://www.dropbox.com/home?d=1 page it shows the big folder as "Deleted" (and I hope it hasn't deleted it for the person who shared it with me too!) so it seems once a folder has been shared, that amount of space comes off my quota and can't be recovered.
I use a paid plan with Google Drive for my own personal cloud storage, so I only installed Dropbox because someone else wanted to share a folder with me that way - but I don't want to have a paid plan with Dropbox as well as Google; it gets a bit ridiculous if every time someone wants to share something I have to sign up to a new cloud service!
Presumably I can just close my Dropbox account and open a new one next time they want to share files, but that doesn't sound like a very convenient solution. Is there a better way?
Did you remove your access to the share, or simply delete the folder?
I couldn't work out how to remove access to the share - that's what I wanted to do, but I didn't have an option to do that. So I deleted the folder, and just hope I haven't screwed it up for the person who shared it with me. That didn't reduce the amount of space taken up either, so I deactivated my Dropbox account and set up a new one. That's obviously not the ideal solution! It doesn't seem to be very intuitive, and I tried following the suggestions on this thread, but the options people are talking about (like removing access to a share) simply weren't available to me.
In fact, I think the problem is that the article about sharing assumes that I'm the one doing the sharing, and tells me how I can unshare. But it's not me who's done the sharing - someone else has shared it with me, and I want to now detach from that, but don't have the option to do so. There doesn't seem to be a help article about how to do that - do I need to contact the original person and ask them to unshare?
@Fluffmeister1 wrote: I think the problem is that the article about sharing assumes that I'm the one doing the sharing, and tells me how I can unshare.
I think the problem is that the article about sharing assumes that I'm the one doing the sharing, and tells me how I can unshare.
The help article I linked to above explains how you can remove a shared folder that you're a member of. Refer to the section titled Permanently remove a folder.
Thank you! That did do the trick this time. The folder I was trying to remove yesterday didn't have any names by it, so I didn't get the drop down box, but this one did.
