Dropbox cancelled my personal account when I was added to a family account! I need it back!

Question

Folks, I have had a personal Dropbox+ account for several years.  Someone in my family used my preferred email gmail addy, the same one on my personal account, to join me to the family account.  Without asking me, Dropbox gave me a refund and cancelled my personal account when they added me to the family plan.  That's NOT what I want!  I want to keep my personal account separate from the family account (I'm a teacher and writer and I want to pay for my own account and keep my files separate in case the administrator of the Family Room stops paying).  Now that all of my files are in the family account, how do I separate them easily?  The only thing I can think of is to:

~ Have the Family Room administrator drop my preferred gmail address from the family plan, then set up a "new" Dropbox account using that email addy.  Right now all of my many folders, including the shared "Family Room" folder, are in my Dropbox folder on my computer.  Would I have to drag and drop all of my files into my "new" Dropbox+ account?

~ The Family Room admin could add me back in later by using my secondary gmail account. Would these two accounts (personal and family) be linked?

~ I use a Mac desktop using Ventura and a PC laptop using Windows 11 synced through Dropbox.

Any ideas?  It sucks that I can't ask Dropbox directly  😉

Megan · Answer

Hi @SharonMac, is it possible that you upgraded a different account?

Have you tried using our self-serve look-up tool, in order to locate the email behind your recent charge? Also, what does your plan page report right now, because it sounds like you're using a Basic account.

SharonMac · Answer

So I did what you said, Jay.  I dropped myself from the Family Room account, upgraded my personal account using my preferred gmail, and got an email from Dropbox saying "Dropbox payment received, account upgraded." The email has the following:  Amount: $127.08
New space: 2.03 TB
Transaction ID: removed

Then my family added me to the Family account using my second email addy.

BUT NOW I can get into the Family account but when I try to save anything to my personal Dropbox (which I just paid $127 for), it says

"You have used 23,422% of your plan's storage" and won't let me save anything to my account.

This is a mess!!!  Can you help!  I can give you both my emails but I don't think you have the right to unravel this!?!

Jay · Answer

Hi @SharonMac, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

As you've discovered, joining a Family plan with a paid plan of your own would result in a refund, as mentioned here.

The simplest method to return to the previous state would be to leave the Family plan, upgrade your personal account again to Plus, and then have the Family manager add that secondary Gmail address to join the Family.

Currently, it isn't possible to link personal accounts with Family accounts under separate email addresses. This is only possible on Dropbox Business teams. This means that only one account at the same time could sync via the Dropbox desktop application or mobile app.

Regarding the OSes, this shouldn't affect your accounts.

If you need any further assistance, please let me know!