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Desperately need help recovering files

Hello,

I did something incredibly stupid the other day and thought I had fixed it but now realise with horror that it wasn't fixed after all....

I dragged a folder off my desktop straight out of Dropbox into another cloud storage folder. Soon after I deleted the other cloud storage software off my computer as it wasn't working well and forgot about the folder I had dragged in.

After much panic I went into my online version of Dropbox and saw that the folder was still there - so relieved - downloaded it as a ZIP and put it back on my desktop. All the subfolders were there and I didn't think to check. Now I see today that all the folders are completely empty.

Please help as I have lost artwork and unique files going back many years.

There's no sign of it in Deleted Items. I don't know whether or not to upgrade to a higher version of Dropbox (am on Basic) in order to get phone support or whether even this act would somehow make the folders even more unrecoverable.

Any advice greatly received.

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Accepted answers

Hannah

Hey @vevaw, I've gone ahead and removed your screenshot and the folder name in one of your replies.

If I missed something or if you need anything else, let us know!

All comments

Rich

@vevaw wrote:
There's no sign of it in Deleted Items.

Is there anything listed on your Events page?

I don't know whether or not to upgrade to a higher version of Dropbox (am on Basic) in order to get phone support ...

In order to get phone support you would need to upgrade to a Business team plan which has a minimum of three users. Any paid plan would get you access to live chat and email support via the ticket system.

Note that upgrading won't have any effect on your ability to restore files (i.e. if you can't recover them with Basic, you wouldn't be able to recover them even if you upgraded).

vevaw

Hi Rich, thanks for replying.

OK I might upgrade to see if I can get phone support.

In Events it says that I deleted the folder on 10th Jan (even though I didn't physically send it to Delete) and this was the day after I moved the folder into the other cloud so a sort of delayed Delete.

Jay

Hi @vevaw, if the folder appears in events, do it show any other files in that event?

Since this is now over 30 days ago, it wouldn't be possible to recover files from beyond that time, unfortunately. Upgrading to any other plan wouldn't help in this regard either, as it isn't retroactive.

vevaw

Hi Jay, it's not 30 days just two days ago, sorry I wrote Jan not Feb. Is there any chance of recovery do you know?

Best wishes Vicky

Jay

If it's two days ago, then you should be able to recover that event, if there were files in it to begin with.

Was this a shared folder or a private folder?

vevaw

Private

Jay

Could you attach a screenshot showing the event exactly as it appears on the site on the events page?

vevaw

[removed]

vevaw

Referring to 'you removed (folder name) and 88 more folders'. The 88 folders were contained within the main (folder name) folder.

Mark

For shared folders, you need to rejoin at www.dropbox.com/share OR get the owner to reinvite you (that's what 'you removed....' means.

vevaw

Sorry it's not a shared folder and it says 'you deleted' not 'you removed'. There were a few folders in it that were shared but not the ones I most need to recover.

Nancy

Hey @vevaw. Can you please click on the hyperlink that’s associated with this deletion event, and let me know what you see (feel free to send me one more screenshot)?

Do you see an option to restore your folders this way?

vevaw

Hi Nancy,

By some miracle I have found the folder and all the files intact. It was amongst my Windows folders,. Even though I had uninstalled the other cloud software a folder had been left behind and it contained all the missing files. Thank goodness. Thank you for your help.

Nancy

Glad to hear you found your files, @vevaw! For anything else, we’ll be right here.

vevaw

Hi Nancy, please can you tell me know to delete my posts on here as there are some screenshots and info I don't want left online permanently.

Best wishes

Hannah

Hey @vevaw, I've gone ahead and removed your screenshot and the folder name in one of your replies.

If I missed something or if you need anything else, let us know!

Theresa

Hi @vevaw I am glad the files you were missing were eventually found 🙌.

I’m curious how Dropbox has been working for you since your issue was resolved. If you're open to sharing, I'd love to hear how you’ve been incorporating Dropbox into your daily routine.

Have you tried using Dropbox Rewind since? If anything it’s a great tool for recovering earlier file versions!

Looking forward to hearing from you,

T 😺 (Dropbox Community Manager)