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I uninstalled Dropbox from my computer, but the Dropbox folder still takes up space on my hard drive

I use to have a dropbox account (using company email credentials) from a company I have worked for before and now after leaving the company and unistalling dropbox, my Win10 is still saying I have around 28GB on that work folder.

Another thing. When I go and right click on the dropbox folder and go to properties, its saying:

Size: 800GB

Size on disk: 28.4

Why do I have 2 different folder sizes?
And, how do I delete everything dropbox in my PC (Dropbox already uninstalled, I do not see it in apps)

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Hannah

Hey @dups2788, thanks for joining our Community and happy Monday!

Uninstalling the Dropbox application, won't actually free up the space the Dropbox folder is taking up.

But if your computer has been unlinked from the account and Dropbox is uninstalled, you can delete the Dropbox folder from your computer, to free up that space.

The discrepancy is probably because you used to have most files set to online-only in your Dropbox folder.

That would turn them into placeholder files, with no physical size.

I hope this helps, but let me know if you have any questions.

All comments

Hannah

Hey @dups2788, thanks for joining our Community and happy Monday!

Uninstalling the Dropbox application, won't actually free up the space the Dropbox folder is taking up.

But if your computer has been unlinked from the account and Dropbox is uninstalled, you can delete the Dropbox folder from your computer, to free up that space.

The discrepancy is probably because you used to have most files set to online-only in your Dropbox folder.

That would turn them into placeholder files, with no physical size.

I hope this helps, but let me know if you have any questions.

dups2788

Thanks Hannah.

Is there a way to move this folder from to another drive while keeping all its contents?

Its currently in my C drive, and when I try transferring it to my other hard drive, its transfering the whole 800GB instead of the "placeholder" file of 28GB.

If I can transfer it, does the 800 GB transfer or the 28GB placeholder file?

Rich

@dups2788 wrote:
Its currently in my C drive, and when I try transferring it to my other hard drive, its transfering the whole 800GB instead of the "placeholder" file of 28GB.

It can only transfer the 28GB of data that's actually on your drive. The transfer window will still show 800GB because Windows knows that's the size of the files in the folder, but their not taking up that much space on your drive because they were marked as online-only. Also note that any files that were marked as online-only will be inaccessible now that Dropbox has been uninstalled.

Jay

Hi @dups2788, as @Rich states, Windows knows the actual size of the files, and the size it should be.

When the desktop app is uninstalled, moving the folder wouldn't download the full 800 GB of files, only the files currently local on the machine.

dups2788

Thank you, that makes sense.

dups2788

Thank you, great help.

emelon8

Hi Jay, I am still having issues with this. I unlinked my personal and work Dropbox accounts from my computer and uninstalled Dropbox. Now I'd like to copy the two Dropbox folders (size: 4.44 TB; size on disk: 292 GB) to an external hard drive. When I try to copy the folders over, Windows thinks they're too big to copy to the external hard drive (free space: 3.33 TB). I don't care about copying the files that were stored online at the time I unlinked them, just the locally stored files. How can I fix this and copy just the 292 GB of local files?

Nancy

Hey @emelon8! Can you right click on each one of these two Dropbox folders, and send me a screenshot of their size?

I’d also like a screenshot of the error message you’re receiving.

Let me know when you’re ready.

emelon8

Personal Dropbox Folder

Work Dropbox Folder

Error Message

Nancy

Thanks for these screenshots! From what I understand, your external drive calculates the original size of these folders and not the actual size that the files are taking up from your hard drive.

Instead of copying the entire Dropbox folders to your drive, can you open them instead and try to manually copy the content you wish to move over? Does that help?

emelon8

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. If I go in the Dropbox folder and highlight all the subfolders and try to copy them, I get the same error as before. There are too many files to copy them one by one. Is there any way to tell the folder to delete or stop keeping track of the online-only files? It looks like they're still showing up in the folders. When I view the properties of the individual files, they have a non-zero size (but 0 bytes on disk).

Nancy

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to ignore the online-only files all at once. Since you’ve uninstalled the Dropbox app from your device, the Dropbox folder behaves like a normal computer folder and the online-only files you see are placeholders of the original files you’d stored on the Dropbox server.

Since you don’t need them, you can select them locally and delete them, before trying to copy the remainder to your external hard drive.

xMPWx

I'm having the same problem, I unistalled the app and deleted the rest of what's left on my computer and it still shows that my computer hard drive it full. I don't get it.

Megan

Hey @xMPWx, sorry to hear about that!

Have you successfully deleted your Dropbox folder too? Do you specifically see that your old Dropbox files take up space on the device?

Also, do you think it's possible to check your PC's settings > System > Storage and send me a couple of screenshots, please?

Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there!

xMPWx

@Megan I did successfully deleted the Dropbox Folder, I don't see any of the dropbox files that I had. I even emptied the recycling bin.

xMPWx

@Megan

Rich

Have you checked File Explorer to see if those folders still exist?

Megan

Hey @xMPWx, thanks for the screenshots!

I was going to ask the same thing as @Rich did. Can you open your File Explorer locally, and maybe search for these folders?

Do you get any results when you do?

Let me know more!