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My Dropbox earned storage has been reduced without explanation.

Adi_Shamku2211

Dear Dropbox Support,

I am writing to report a serious issue with my Dropbox account.

Over the years, I legitimately increased my free storage from the original 2 GB to approximately 10.8 GB through Dropbox's official referral program and promotional bonuses. This storage was earned fairly and was displayed on my account.

However, for more than two years, although my account continued to show approximately 10.8 GB of total storage, the actual usable space was less than 1 GB. During the last few days, the available space has been reduced even further to less than 0.1 GB.

I find this situation misleading and unacceptable. My account continued to display the storage I had earned, while in reality I could no longer use it. If I legitimately earned that storage through Dropbox's official promotions, I do not understand why it has effectively disappeared.

Because of this, I have uninstalled Dropbox from my phone. At the same time, I continue to receive emails encouraging me to upgrade to a paid plan or return to the free 2 GB plan. I am not interested in these offers. My concern is not about purchasing additional storage, but about the loss of the storage space that I had already earned.

I kindly request that you:

Review my account history.
Explain why my earned storage has been reduced.
Restore the storage that I legitimately earned through Dropbox's official referral program and promotions, if this was removed in error.

I can provide screenshots and any additional information needed to verify my account history.

I look forward to your response.

Thank you.

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Quota

Accepted answers

Nancy

Thanks for posting here too, @paulwhkh.

Can you copy and paste a screenshot of the error message you keep getting, as well as one more visual of what you see on this page?

Other than that, do you see any backups taking up your Dropbox storage, when you visit your Backups page online?

All comments

Megan

Hi there, @Adi_Shamku2211, let's jump together right into this!

Space earned through referrals is permanent and won't be removed even if you upgrade and/or downgrade your account. You should still be able to view them on your account from this page.

Is it possible that any promotion that you used before has now expired? Could you attach a screenshot showing your quota on the plan page in order to see the current total?

Have you checked to make sure that you don't have any shared content, that might be taking place in your Dropbox account? What about any active Backups?

Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there!

Adi_Shamku2211

WhatsApp Image 2026-07-13 at 21.11.08.jpeg

Hello,

Thank you for your reply.

I have checked my account carefully.

My account shows that I have used all 10.8 GB of storage. However, when I calculate the size of all the folders and files stored in my Dropbox account, the total is only 92.227 MB.

I have also checked for shared folders and backups, and I cannot find anything that could account for the missing storage.

This is why I believe there is an issue with my account. The reported storage usage does not match the actual size of the files stored in Dropbox.

Could you please review my account and explain where the remaining storage is being used? If there is an error, I kindly request that it be corrected.

Thank you for your assistance.

Megan

Hey @Adi_Shamku2211!

I'll do my best to help us get to the bottom of this.

If possible, I'd appreciate a screenshot of your online plan page (rather than the mobile app). When you view your plan page on our website, it shows an exact breakdown of the content taking up space in your Dropbox account. While you're at it, please send a screenshot of your online Backup page and what it reports.

Thanks a bunch!

Adi_Shamku2211

Megan

Hey @Adi_Shamku2211!

I appreciate you sending a screenshot, but it looks like you are on your Dropbox home page.

Are you encountering any errors when trying to open the hyperlinked pages from my last reply? If you can access them, please send me a screenshot of that page.

paulwhkh

I had the same problem yesterday and today. Now down to 200mb of files and the system is still telling me I am over 2gb! Been happily using my friend referral extra space for years and never got anywhere near the limit and then bamm I'm over and unable to do anything except delete!

Nancy

Thanks for posting here too, @paulwhkh.

Can you copy and paste a screenshot of the error message you keep getting, as well as one more visual of what you see on this page?

Other than that, do you see any backups taking up your Dropbox storage, when you visit your Backups page online?

paulwhkh

That solved that. Suddenly I'm backing up my 1TB back external drive to a 3gb dropbox! Not that I recall asking to do that….. But thanks.

Jay

Thanks for keeping us updated, @paulwhkh, and that your issue appears to be resolved.

If there's anything else we can assist with, feel free to reply back here!

Adi_Shamku2211

Hello,

Thank you for your help.

I found the cause of the issue. My Dropbox Backup was using almost all of my storage. After removing the backup folders, the backup usage is now 0 bytes.

My account now correctly shows 89.8 MB used out of a total of 10.75 GB.

Thank you for helping me identify the cause of the problem.