I have two Dropbox accounts and my files are missing

Question

I'm almost sorry to admit that I have joined this forum because I desperately need help! I've been a Dropbox and a big fan for about 15 years. Now, disaster has struck and I seem to have lost ALL MY FILES. Here is what happened:

I have two dropbox accounts. One is my personal account which I access from my personal Chrome identity. The other is for the music festival I run, which I access from the festival Chrome identity. I hardly ever use this one. For the last few days, when I open the Chrome festival window, I have been receiving prompts to login to Dropbox. I finally succumbed and logged in. It has now overwritten my personal Dropbox, deleting all my files. This is despite the fact that I asked it to create a new folder when it warned me it would overwrite the current one. When I log in to Chrome using my personal id, then open Dropbox from there, it is completely empty and no deleted files are available. To make things worse, last year, I changed my settings so files are not stored on my hard drive. I completely trusted Dropbox. The question is: How can I restore my files?

Hannah · Answer

Hey @Nedkelski, thanks for your reply here.

I just wanted to clarify that even if you had signed in to the desktop app with account A, then signed out and signed back in to account B, account A wouldn't get disabled or deleted.

In your initial post you mentioned:

For the last few days, when I open the Chrome festival window, I have been receiving prompts to login to Dropbox

By festival window, are you referring to the festival account's Dropbox folder?

And what exactly did those prompts say?

Lastly, if you use one web browser to log in to one account, and a different browser or a private browsing window to log in to the other account, what do you see?

Nedkelski · Answer

Hi Walter - Thanks for the reply. I have checked both the deleted files and events pages. they show absolutely no activity. Weirdly, the festival user account hijacked the personal account, which appears to no longer exist. A friend tried deleting and reinstalling the desktop app but the reinstallation failed. I will try doing that again today.

Walter · Answer

Hi there @Nedkelski - sorry to hear about your missing files.

Can you please log into both of your Dropbox accounts and check your deleted files page and the events page as well?

Let me know what you find and we'll take it from there.