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How to remove my former employer's Dropbox files from my computer

Hello,

Complicated situation.

Old employer's dropbox is still set up on my PC. It was logged in via my bosses email, I think. I have the dropbox folder still visible in my file explorer with all of the files in it, and they still sync, as some seem to have been modified a few days ago.

I want to free storage space on my computer. Since the files are still synced, I assume that means I can't just delete the folder because it will delete for the entire company? So I googled and saw the options to make files online only to free up storage space.

So I tried to do this, but when opening the dropbox desktop app, it seems that I was not signed in and asked me to log in to an account. Of course I don't have access to that login info, and don't want it - I just want to delete all these files from my computer. The wierd thing is though, if I am not logged in in the Dropbox desktop app, why are new files still showing up in the dropbox folder in my file explorer??

Naively, my next step was to simply uninstall dropbox and hope the dropbox file explorer would dissapear with it. Of course this did not work.

So... now what? Am I free to delete the files from file explorer without risking them being deleted from the company? I'm very confused and afraid to delete any files in case I screw over my former employers.

Any help much appreciated!!

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Rich

@ioasdasdasda wrote:
It still worries me that the folder itself was updating with files from the company up to a few days ago, even when, seemingly, I wasn't signed in on the Dropbox application.

If you could see files updating and the Dropbox application was still installed and running, then it was still signed in and syncing. The files can't sync if the application isn't signed in and running.

I'm still sort of terrified to delete the files.

Don't be. As long as you've uninstalled Dropbox from the computer, there's no way that deleting the folder will affect anyone else.

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Hannah

Hey @ioasdasdasda, thanks for joining the Dropbox Community!

Can you send us a screenshot of the prompt asking you to sign in to the app?

If you go to the "account" tab in the app's preferences, do you see your employer's account linked there perhaps?

Let me know and we'll go from there.

ioasdasdasda

Hi,

Since I uninstalled Dropbox in an attempt to remove the files, I just get a Windows error message when I try to open the Dropbox App.

Screenshot 2024-02-19 104407.png

Yet all the files are still accessible in my C: drive in the File Explorer.

Uninstalling the app was probably unwise 😕

Rich

@ioasdasdasda wrote:
Since I uninstalled Dropbox in an attempt to remove the files ...

If you've uninstalled the application, you can safely delete the local Dropbox folder and it won't impact any other users. With the application gone, it can't sync.

Also note that uninstalling doesn't remove the Dropbox folder as doing that would delete your files. It's intended that you remove that folder manually, if you wish to do so, after the uninstall.

ioasdasdasda

Ok, thank you! It still worries me that the folder itself was updating with files from the company up to a few days ago, even when, seemingly, I wasn't signed in on the Dropbox application. I'm still sort of terrified to delete the files. But thank you!

Rich

@ioasdasdasda wrote:
It still worries me that the folder itself was updating with files from the company up to a few days ago, even when, seemingly, I wasn't signed in on the Dropbox application.

I'm still sort of terrified to delete the files.

Don't be. As long as you've uninstalled Dropbox from the computer, there's no way that deleting the folder will affect anyone else.