Just a note to the community concerning free expansions of the size of a free DropBox account.
I established a free account of size 2GB in 2012. Several years later, DropBox sent an email indicating that my account, though still free, had been increased gratis to 5GB. In the intervening years since, I accumulated around 4GB of content.
In the past several weeks I received several emails indicating that my account was over the 2GB limit for a free account and the syncing of the account would be stopped. I think DropBox may have forgotten the increase to 5GB they did some years ago, or was simply pulling it back, which is their prerogative.
Several days ago the account quit syncing as promised. Now here's the rub: In response to the account no longer syncing, I removed content from the DropBox folder on my computer to get the account under the 2GB limit. I then accessed my account in a browser and observed that the changes made on my computer were not reflected, which may have been expected. The changes I made to the DropBox folder were to remove several large directories at the top level to get the overall size down to under 2GB. I also removed a number of small files at the top level and elsewhere, just for housekeeping.
So, to try and get DropBox to sync, I removed the same several top level large directories via the browser and let it sit overnite expecting that a sync would occur that would reflect the smallish house keeping changes. Nothing happened. So the next morning I followed the advice on the DropBox site to uninstall and re-install DropBox on my computer. However, first I copied the local DropBox directory to a safe place. Upon removing and re-installing the DropBox app on my computer, no syncing had occurred involving the house keeping changes.
Fortunately, I have the copy of the DropBox directory, so the house keeping work was not lost. But I do wonder why DropBox behaved as it did. If I had to do it over, I would copy, not remove, the several large top level directories on my computer to get the size down below 2GB, then remove them in the DropBox account via the browser and see if a sync occurred by adding a dummy test file on my computer.
In the end, this is not a complaint as I have never paid DropBox a dime, and I am grateful for their free service. But, just be warned!
