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Accidental mass deletion (22k+ files), how can I restore my files?

Hello Dropbox team,

I’m using Dropbox Basic and experienced a critical Dropbox desktop client issue on macOS Sequoia.

While troubleshooting a File Provider / desktop app bug, my account unintentionally deleted over 22,000 files within minutes. This was NOT intentional.

The Event History shows multiple large deletion events within a short time window.

I immediately stopped all syncing and made no further changes.

I urgently need a server-side rollback to restore my Dropbox account to the state before this deletion occurred.

Thank you very much for your help.

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Jay

Hi @QuangVo, thanks for contacting us.

If you're on a paid plan, you can use the Dropbox Rewind feature to rollback your account to an earlier state.

Otherwise, you can use the deleted files page to restore the missing files to your account.

Keep me updated with any progress!

QuangVo

Hi, I want to clarify the situation.

As you can see, the Deleted Files page only shows a very small subset of items and does NOT contain the original folder structure. The vast majority of the deleted data is missing from Deleted Files.

This confirms that this was not a normal folder deletion, but a metadata-level deletion caused by a Dropbox desktop client / File Provider issue on macOS Sequoia.

Because the folder tree no longer exists, manual restoration via Deleted Files is impossible, and there is no location I can restore from.

Given the scale of the deletion (22,000+ files) and the missing folder structure, the only viable solution is a full server-side account rollback to a timestamp before the incident.

Could you please escalate this case internally to Dropbox Support for account-level restoration?

Thank you.

Jay

Thanks for the info, I've sent you an email, please could you reply to it when you get a chance?