My Dropbox account was coupled to another and I no longer have control

Question

OK, lots of ****** happening. I received shared file request from a coworker at our small business. Yes, it is 100% our employee. He had set up his own trial account. I have a paid personal account with 4tb. Instead of just giving me access to the folder in question, I got a prompt to connect my account. I did not pay close enough attention to the wording and selected my personal account. Apparently this action then shifted my account under his account and in his control. I had no idea until he deleted his account and suddenly I received notices that my account was closed and I was receiving a refund! I immediately reached out to him and he restored his account which brought mine back online. We started looking how to decouple my account from his. However, he suggested I make a full back up of everything in my dropbox to ensure that when he followed the procedure to decouple our accounts that nothing bad happen.

So, I cleared a 5tb drive and set it to be the new destination for my dropbox folder and did a full sync. HOWEVER, none of the files show any memory use, they ALL show zero bytes. When I right click on the folder or files I do not get any Dropbox options such as "set to online" or "offline only." I have followed the instructions to adjust my settings in Apple OS preferences, and set the Dropbox preferences to sync all files and make them available offline. Still nothing. The files and folders appear to be nothing more than place holders with zero bytes.

Nothing I am reading is helping. I do not have a high enough paid account to access chat or a return call from Dropbox. I emailed them 24 hours ago and have received NOTHING from them. I am beyond ****** and frustrated. I need to recover my account and have the files downloaded. Am I left with literally downloading everything directly from Dropbox online and then backing up? I am so ****** frustrated.

One thing I did not change, I updated the settings in Dropbox to give me back the ability to house my dropbox files on an external drive. I have a MacBook and Mac Mini. They updated their system to force you to use the internal drive for shared drives like dropbox, which sucks when you have a 1tb internal drive and nearly 4tb on Dropbox.

Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated. Dropbox customer service access is ridiculous at this point.

Mark · Answer

I honestly had NO idea Dropbox did something like this.

Dropbox for business has been around almost as long as their paid for plans.

Honestly, why would someone want to give up the rights to their account???

Think of it the other way, why wouldnt a business owner want control and management over its employees accounts? Single centralised billing, able to remove peoples accesses when they leave easily etc.

The fact that I can only use email support now is beyond frustrating, especially with something as serious as this

Again, this has always been the case. Phone support has only ever been available for business users. Less than that (i.e. you and me!) get email or chat support. Chat is actually very good, but, only available Mon through Friday.

I also still do not have the ability to right click on a file or folder at any level and select online or offline, or anything else as there are NO dropbox prompts there.

Something isnt right there, have you tried a full reinstall? Using a version available for offline maybe - that should re-create all of the icons etc. Note thats nothing to do with the moving to business at all, its something to do with the install.

DocSGP · Answer

Thanks Mark. I have to tell you, in the constant nonstop face paced work world we have, I was not paying THAT CLOSE attention to the nomenclature details. Honestly, when I did read it, I do not recall it being so explicitly stated that I would lose control. I honestly had NO idea Dropbox did something like this. He was just trying to share a folder with me, something I have done a million times without issue. Honestly, why would someone want to give up the rights to their account??? But, my error aside, it's not even that they are not working on the weekends, I filed my support request on Thursday morning Pacific time and have heard nothing back. The fact that I can only use email support now is beyond frustrating, especially with something as serious as this. I have been a paid customer for years and had the ability to chat with them in the past, albeit it was a long time ago.

But more to the point. I have tried everything and still cannot sync my files back to my computer as full files unless I double click on each one. I have a couple of hundred thousand files, so this is not an option. They just show as 0 bytes, so they are a place holder. I am currently going through and downloading everything directly from DB onto an external drive just to make sure when the accounts are decoupled nothing bad happens and I lose everything. I also still do not have the ability to right click on a file or folder at any level and select online or offline, or anything else as there are NO dropbox prompts there. I have gone through everything I could find online, made any and every adjustment I could find on my MacBook Pro and still nothing changes.

Mark · Answer

As you said on your first post, unfortunately you agreed to join a Dropbox Business Plan. You are warned when doing this that you loose control of the acccount as it becames owned by the other party. They have then also deleted that, and agreed to it - they are warned lots of times before they do so that if they do it data is lost.

In terms of Support, Dropbox do not work on a weekend so you'd not get help today. However, as long as you are on a paid for plan you can log tickets at www.dropbox.com/support.

In terms of the 0 byte files. If you have set Dropbox back up again on your machine and logged in again you shouldnt need to worry about the fact they are 0byte ones.