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Why is my account out of space?

As seems to be the case these days with many "Apps" they want you to buy their product but don't deliver support and want to rely on "Communities". In other words free assistance from other users which costs them nothing but for me at least puts me off ever paying for any of their products!

Now the reason I wanted support. I was asked to "share" on a Dropbox account. Not my account but someone who asked me to assist in uploading a large quantity of documents in a short space of time. As far as I am concerned this had and should not have had any involvement with my Dropbox account. I did not add anything to my account, all the uploads went direct to the Dropbox shared folders.

Now, I constantly receive notifications that my Dropbox is full and that I am Using 34.38 GB of 2 GB space. How ridiculous is that!!!!! They are trying to sell me more storage when I do not need storage and none of the uploaded files should be in my Dropbox.

I want this resolved. I want my Dropbox cleared of files that should not have ever been added to them.

That's why a support access should be provided to enable faults to be rectified. Some hopes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Accepted answers

Jay

Hi @adrian29630, you can leave the shared folder from your account, or remove your access to it completely, by following these steps.

It won't affect other users who are currently members of the shared folder.

All comments

Mark

Hi @adrian29630

I'm afraid that is how Dropbox works - any file in your account uses your quota regardless of if the other person paid or not. There is nothing to fix here - its how it works.

If you need to just upload things to people and not edit ask them to send you a Dropbox Requests link instead.

adrian29630

They sent me a request to share THEIR Dropbox in which they have more than adequate storage for the files they wanted in their dropbox. Nothing to do with me or my DropBox account. I had access to theirs and I uploaded files directly to their account. So there was no reason for there to be any files in my account. It was as if I had no account personally but was authorized to use the shared account.

That is what is so ridiculous with this situation. None of the files are mine. None were added to my Dropbox they went straight into the shared account set up to receive them. I am pretty sure under normal circumstances if I had exceeded my limit I would never have been able to 34.38 GB when my limit is 2GB

Megan

Hi @adrian29630, I'd be more than happy to help!

Just so we can clarify if they shared folders with you, or a file request, could you possibly check the email you received, in order to upload content to their account? Did it look something like that?

If you could share a screenshot with me, that'd be amazing. (Just make sure none of your personal info is shown there)

While you're at it, can you also send me a screenshot of your account plan page, so we can have a look into this too?

adrian29630

Hello Megan

Thank you for your reply. I have attached screenshots of the 2 emails I received with instructions to use/access shared folders. I hope this provides what you asked for.

As far as my account with Dropbox is concerned I have a Free basic account with a 2GB limit. In the past, if I have ever got close to that limit I have received notifications to upgrade or delete files. That is why I find it hard to believe that I have apparently exceeded the limit to the extent I am told I have and it was not stopped or blocked much sooner.

screenshot-mail.google.com-2023.01.20-11_34_18edit.jpg

Hannah

Hey @adrian29630, thanks for the screenshots here.

This clarifies the situation indeed, as it looks like you've been invited to add a shared folder to your account.

Shared folders give you edit permissions, so they are added to your account, thus taking up your space.

If you just need to view the folder, this person can send you a shared link instead and a file request, if you also need to upload files.

adrian29630

Thanks for this reply although I still do not understand what this means. As far as I was/am concerned I was invited to share a folder created by the other person to enable me to add content to it. I did not expect that this would affect my account as I was not adding anything to my folders, only those created by the other person. What you are saying seems to imply that both accounts would need to have the same amount of access/space even though the folders would only really be in one account.

What I need to know is what will happen if I delete the folders/content in my Dropbox account? Will that result in all the content being deleted from both or can I remove it from mine and the files in the other "shared" account retained? It seems a ridiculous situation that it is not possible for access to an account to be granted without requiring both to have levels when the files are only required in one account.

Jay

Hi @adrian29630, you can leave the shared folder from your account, or remove your access to it completely, by following these steps.

It won't affect other users who are currently members of the shared folder.

adrian29630

Thanks I will do that and perhaps they will stop pestering me to upgrade my account

Rich

@adrian29630 wrote:
Thanks for this reply although I still do not understand what this means. ... What you are saying seems to imply that both accounts would need to have the same amount of access/space even though the folders would only really be in one account.

For future reference, and to help clear things up, when you are a member of a shared folder, regardless of whether you are the owner or are invited to someone else's folder, you have your own COPY of the folder in your account. You're not uploading to someone else's account, and the folder doesn't exist in one location. Everyone has their own copy of the folder and anything you do in that folder will sync to the other user's copy of folder.

Harry Molyneux

If that's the case why does every member with access to that folder need to pay for it's storage separately? Surely there should be an owner or owner organization responsible for the billing of that folder.

It doesn't work like that on other services and seems like profiteering.

Rich

@Harry Molyneux wrote:
If that's the case why does every member with access to that folder need to pay for it's storage separately?

Because every member has their own COPY of the folder in their own account which syncs back to all the other members, and anything in your account takes up space. You're not accessing a folder in someone else's account.

https://help.dropbox.com/storage-space/storage-space

Harry Molyneux

It’s not really their own unique copy, it’s the exact same folder.

It doesn’t have to work that way, it’s just set up like that by Dropbox so they can charge users more. It’s pretty obvious. Google Drive doesn’t work that way and the functionality is the exact same.

Rich

@Harry Molyneux wrote:
It’s not really their own unique copy, it’s the exact same folder.

No, it's a unique copy for each user. You can even rename and move the shared folder elsewhere in your account, and it won't affect the other members while still syncing with their copies of the folder.

Sure, there's Dropbox's deduplication magic happening in the background so each unique file chunk (remember, files are stored in chunks, not complete files) is not duplicated on the back-end servers, but each user does have their own unique copy of the files in their account. If I make a change in a folder that is shared with me, that change is not seen instantly for all other members, which it would if I was editing the same copy as theirs. That edited file is synced to all of the other members of the share.

Harry Molyneux

What benefit is there to having it sync not in real time? And the ability rename a folder doesn’t justify having to pay for the pricing. You could just create a shortcut to it and rename is whatever you like in another app like Google Drive.

Why are you defending this so adamantly? Do you work for Drop Box?

adrian29630

That is my opinion on this as well. It seems to me that if Person A has an account with a folder in it and wants to share access or content of that folder with Person B there is no real reason why Person B should need to have or acquire limits equal to Person A.

In my case, Person A asked me to help to upload documents to his folder because there were a substantial number and he did not have time to do all of them. I did not need to view these, read them, or interact with them just upload them to a folder in Person A's Dropbox account.

As far as I was concerned I was not sharing the documents just having a shared access to the folder where the documents were required to be stored.

As others have stated it seems to me this idea of sharing resulting in the content being held in both "shared" accounts and therefore requiring both account holders to have the same level of storage is nothing more than a con.

ScreamUser1

IF you both have ownership of the folder, then any files you delete will be deleted for both of you. So don't delete anything.

No one has explicitly said this.

You must go into the folder in question and say, "I'm out. Bye, Felicia!"

How you do that is not straightforward (IMO).

To remove yourself from the shared folder.

Highlight the folder you want to be removed from.
"Sharing" and "Details" appear to the right of my folders. Choose "Sharing"
Scroll down to your name & click on the " . . ." that follows your name.
Select "Remove"

(Most of the other answers were speaking shorthand to other people who know the lingo, not to someone who is at their wit's end with the peculiarities of DropBox - All of these platforms have their own weirdness; if you invite someone to a folder in BOX you have to have a license for them and room. So I am not being too critical of DropBox).

ScreamUser1

Sorry, Rich. That has to be new. The number of times I've put files in a shared folder and had a co-worker delete them has been numerous. I will only share files by link.

If I hadn't had so many instances of having to relocate files and repost them to the shared folder, I would have assumed I was wrong. But I don't know where you're getting your information or use case.

And answer the question: does your W2 / 1099 come from Dropbox or a parent company or somehow mean you work for them?

dougkepple

DROPBOX needs to rectify this. The issue likely lies with space issues in the physical hard drive files. There is supposed to be a way to make dropbox online only. All of the information and videos I found were all irrelevant. DROPBOX: Please post a response relatable and up-to-date instructions today so we can access THE STORAGE SPACE WE ARE PAYING FOR!!

Rich

@Harry Molyneux wrote:
What benefit is there to having it sync not in real time?

It does sync in real-time but it's not instantaneous like it would be if it were just one folder that everyone could see. It takes time, albeit a very short amount of time, to sync from one location to the other.

Why are you defending this so adamantly? Do you work for Drop Box?

I'm not defending anything. I'm providing information on how (and why) it works the way it does. No, I don't work for Dropbox. I'm a user, just like you.

Rich

@adrian29630 wrote:
I did not need to view these, read them, or interact with them just upload them to a folder in Person A's Dropbox account.

The owner of the folder could send you a File Request, which allows you to upload directly to someone else's account. You wouldn't be able to soo or interact with the files after you upload them, and they would never be in your own account.

https://help.dropbox.com/share/create-file-request

Rich

@ScreamUser1 wrote:
Sorry, Rich. That has to be new.

I'm not sure what specific part you're referring to, but none of this is new. It's how shared folders have worked since their inception.

And answer the question: does your W2 / 1099 come from Dropbox or a parent company or somehow mean you work for them?

No, I don't work for Dropbox. I'm just a user like you.

Coastalvis

Dropbox is the only file sharing software I have come across like this. Googledrive does not work in this way. You can give someone access to your files with various different permissions. Its only the person hosting the files which has to pay for the space, which is the logical solution. Dropbox has adopted the greedy monitization route with some totally backwards logic to back it all up. like many other users, Dropbox is always harrassing you to upgrade. Im really not sure why people use it over other options. What a load of rubbish, and the support is non existant too.