if someone shares a folder with you and you save it to your Dropbox, can they delete that folder fro

Question

Hi,

Someone shared a Dropbox folder with me, and I saved it to my Dropbox. However, now, when I want to go to the files in it, it's nowhere to be found in my Dropbox. I have a piece of software, where I can link to files I have, so I can see the exact path of where I saved these, and it's file://users/[myname]/Dropbox/etc. When I went back to the email where they'd shared the file and clicked on it, it told me that folder no longer existed.

I would prefer not to go back to this person because I'm a journalist and it's a source who was quite forthcoming with me but has since seen his fortunes change, and so I feel he probably intentionally deleted the folder, or if not, that at least now, he would not be inclined to help me anymore.

To add one more wrinkle to this, he had actually saved some documents specifically for me, and so they were in their own folder in the Dropbox, and when I got home, I realized Dropbox had not saved the folder but instead all the files he had set aside were mixed in with everything else. So I had to get his assistant to re-send the selected docs. Somehow, I still have those selected docs that the assistant had to re-share with me later on, which I had also downloaded to my Dropbox, but not the bigger set. Did I just not save the bigger folder correctly or ... I'm so confused. If anyone can shed light on what might have happened and if there's any way to recover the larger folder of files, I would appreciate it!

NYC10

Daphne · Answer

Thanks for getting back to me @nyc10, and apologies in advance for the long reply!

So this might be down to how the files were originally shared with you, as you will have had different options to save them to your Dropbox account.

When sharing, you can either share a folder or you can share a link.

With a shared folder, you can add the folder to your Dropbox account and become a member of the folder. This way, you see all the changes made by other members.

However, with a shared folder the owner can remove you at any time which appears to be the case with the larger folder you mentioned.

With a shared link, it only allows viewing access through the link specifically but you have the option to save a copy of the content to your Dropbox account.

If a shared link is deleted, you won't be able to access the link anymore but your copy of the content in your account is unaffected as this isn't shared, it's simply a copy.

With the smaller subset of files, if you check online, in the "Members" column you will see "Only you" next to the content if it's just a copy, or "X members" if it's a shared folder.

It could be that they shared a folder with you and just haven't removed your access to the folder.

Let me know if this helps shed some light on the options!

nyc10 · Answer

Hi Daphne,

Thanks -- I searched all those places and nothing came up. One question. Why do I still have the files of the smaller subset? The one that I had to ask the assistant to re-send? Does this mean that I saved the larger folder incorrectly? Because I thought I had saved them. I had started going through them, and in my other document, I was linking to those documents. I can see the exact path of them in this other document. But the links now don't work -- they go nowhere, to files that no longer exist. How could they have been in my Dropbox and I thought they were now mine, and now they are just gone? (And yet, why do I have all the files of the smaller subset? Because presumably if the source had wanted to delete all the files, he would have deleted those too, but since he didn't, that leads me to believe he couldn't.) Are there two ways of downloading shared files to one's Dropbox, and if so, can you walk me through the two ways?

NYC10

Daphne · Answer

Hi @nyc10, I'd be more than happy to help get to the bottom of this!

I'd suggest checking your Events page here, to try and locate the event associated with this folder.

Also, can you have a look in your Sharing tab here incase the folder was mistakenly deleted from your account temporarily?

It's possible that the owner has unshared the folder with you, in which case you wouldn't be able to restore the files or undo the event. You would need to contact them to reshare the folder/files with you.

Let me know what you find!