I had a personal Dropbox that I accidentally merge with a Business account by using the same email. How can I get my personal Dropbox back with the email and content that is now associated with business Dropbox login.
A business account shares with a non-business accounts = merging.
They didn't share with you. They invited you to join their business account. If they had sent you a regular shared folder invitation, your account would not have been merged into the business.
And how to get help?
Have the team admin for the business account contact Support and request that your account be restored. They will have access to phone support. Also, refer to the bottom of this help article.
and you don't even get a notification on whether the ticket is received.
If you opened a ticket, you can track it at the link below. Also, refer to the bottom of this help article.
I just wasted 3 hours of my life arguing with an old client over why I do *not* want to merge my account with his Business account as a team member, only to get access to the files that my client is trying to share with me. It's obviously not easy enough for someone who holds a business acccount and isn't very computer savvy (as is the case with this client) to share access to a folder without it going out as an invite to join the team.Reading this thread I shudder at what a mega hassle it might have been, had I not been as alert as I was when I opened the email and looked at the "Accept Invitation" and then the "Merge" buttons. Who in their right mind thought that that was a good idea?You *absolutely* need to be much more clear about the consequences of these actions in your UI! What you are doing here is downright irresponsible and misleading. It is obvious that many many thousands of customers did not understand the consequences of choosing to either merge their accounts or give up their login email for a new account. Seriously? Why?!Anyway, I am in the process of losing an old client over this argument. He is stubborn and thinks that *I* am being unreasonable for not just merging to get to these files. And to have to argue with clients over who is being unreasonable is *always* a bad idea.Can you please go back to the drawing board and change how you share folders/files from a business account? Make the default share behavior to share it as "just" a folder/file, and not as a team-merging invite, for the sake of all that makes sense?
Hey @tillkrueger, I appreciate the time you devoted in detailing us your thoughts on this functionality. That’s some really productive feedback & I’ve made sure to make our product specialists aware of your concerns; we're always looking for ways to improve & we value your opinion, so as to improve the way you interact with Dropbox.
Once again, thanks for posting us here on the matter & please don’t hesitate to get back in touch on the Dropbox Community at any time in case you need assistance or have more questions. Wishing you a wonderful rest of your day ahead!
Thank you for the acknowledgement, Jane. My client has since cancelled his Dropbox Business account, so you should be aware that these choices you make impact you as a company as well. We are all pioneers and hence influencers out here, and if you don't *quickly* respond to these type of issues by making them right, you *will* pay the consequences.While I appreciate your gesture of acknowledgement, this issue is so serious that I can't stress enough the urgency of righting it. A "sorry" simply isn't enough for the grief you are causing thousands of customers. Nothing is as valuable as time, in this life, and by causing thousands of customers many hours of loss of this priceless asset, you are doing serious damage. I know it has become customary amongst our providers, be it utilities, communications, or online services, to try to get away with a simple "sorry for the inconvenience" when the damage is far beyond an inconvenience. We pay you for a service that you have a responsibility to provide without causing us grief or a dire loss of valuable time and energy - in some cases even clients - so the right thing to do would be to offer the customers who you cause such "inconveniences" to something back. The same way we pay you every month for a service that's supposed to "just work", we should be able to expect accountability when it doesn't just work. Certainly in the form of fixing, quickly, what doesn't work, and some sort of appeasement for failing your customers, *without* everyone having to ask for it.Something along the lines of "for the severe inconvenience we caused you as a result of our implementation of the team-invites from a business acount, we will give you one month of business service for free", the same way Amazon offers a free month of Prime membership *and* a small credit for my next purchase when I call them to make them aware of a mess-up on thier part, *without* having to ask for it. I can't count the times that an Amzon customer service representative said "Mr. Krueger, may I offer you a free month of Prime and a $15 credit toward your next purchase to partially rectify this situation". Now *that* is what I call proper accountability and service to your customers.Just an idea...one that many, many more customers should start to demand from their providers. But in the meantime, I ask you to *please* fix those team-invites, pronto!And do consider an appeasement process. Being influencers, we would thank you with our continued patronage and recommendation to our friends, family and colleagues.
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Just cancel and open another account
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I have had a personal Dropbox for years which I use to do all my work, store photos, share files with clients and colleagues etc...
I had a new client wanting to share files via Dropbox and without paying much attention I clicked on the email invitation thinking it was to a shared folder like I have done many times previously, but actually looks like it was an invite to join their team...
So now it appears that my personal Dropbox has been completely taken over and I am now a part of their team!
While I can see that it says on my Personal files that I am the only member, assuming the client can't see the files, it really isn't ideal and would like to reclaim my own Dropbox for myself.
Is there a way for me to remove myself from the Team? And if so will that simply go back to my normal plan?
Any help on this much appreciated as don't want to risk loosing access to my own files and account...
@dominorodgers wrote: While I can see that it says on my Personal files that I am the only member, assuming the client can't see the files ...
While I can see that it says on my Personal files that I am the only member, assuming the client can't see the files ...
They can't see your files normally, but if they're on a Business Advanced or Enterprise plan, then the team admin has the capability to sign in as you and would be able access your files.
Is there a way for me to remove myself from the Team?
No. You need the team admin to convert your account back to an individual account. It's important that they don't simply remove you from the team. Doing so would delete your account and your files. They need to convert you back to an individual account.
And if so will that simply go back to my normal plan?
If you were on a paid plan before joining the team, then you would have received a prorated refund for any time remaining on your account. When your account is converted back, it will be a Basic account, and you'll need to resubscribe if you were previously on a paid plan.
I have the same issue.
I am literally gobsmacked that the admin of the dropbox account can sign in as me and access my personal files.
This is a major security issue. I accepted an invite for one client, which has now taken over my Dropbox account for ALL my clients.
Submitted a ticket.
Thanks for sharing! I was about to do the same, but hesitated just long enough, and started to click around in this forum. Lucky I found your story.
What a strange procedure by Dropbox... Makes me want to look for other cloud options.
I did send in a ticket to ask if there are ways around it, or if I maybe misunderstood something.
Wish you a quick recovery.
Hi, How did this shakedown for you once you submitted your ticket?
I am having the same situation and have been ignored by dropbox for a week- no one has replied to me. Further the ****** ****** admin of the team wont give me privilides to access support features to resolve this horrendous security issue ( suport features being chat or telephone support)...so my hands are tied behind my back. This is a literal **bleep**ing nightmare. I smell a lawuit coming....
Dropbox advised to have the admin remove me from the team (not delete) and that would push me back to a Dropbox Basic plan. I talked with the client over the phone at the time to make sure we got the option right. It still deleted my account. Because I had no account, I couldn't use the ticket system or contact Dropbox (couldn't sign in with no account). But I at least had a ticket I could reply email.
Dropbox asked me for my permission, to contact my client and ask them for permission to restore my own account. That's the account that I was paying for, in my companies name, using my companies email with my companies files. Once my client agreed, then it got sent to the Advanced team. Several days later, my account was activated as a basic account, empty. I upgraded the plan, copied my files back and re-synced.
Took 1.5 weeks and a lot of emails. This was a major breach of data security for me.
Good luck with getting your account recovered!
TYSM for responding to me. Wow! I am so sorry this hapened to you. Truly, a nightmare. At lest your client is cooperative- mine is not. Adding insult to injury is all they've been good for. I'm not sure if you're aware, but your deleted files can be reovered/accessed for 180 days. I am unsure if it matters if youve been deleted or transferred to a dropbox basic...it seems to be a gray area....and so this is where I'm at in the battle- just trying to make sure they can't re-gain access to my stuff (I've already regained my files because client transferred them all to me, but Dropbox never asked me for my consent around handling this they way they did with you, nor did my client...she just randomy sent them). I need clear assurance I am permanently deleted and thres no chance of them un-deleting my files, so my only hope is to keep trying with dropbox ticket system. If you know the answer, do fill me in please as I am desperate...Probably looking at a week or two lost as well to this fiasco. On a final note, it say so much that I got a quicker reply from a stranger in a dropbox forum than from dropbox themselves! I could never in good conscience recommend them!
*at least
*recovered
Sorry so many typos, using a new keyboard!
Hi Iailao,
I know how disruptive this scenario is! Particularly given the lack of prompt support.
When this scenario first occurred, I immediately made a seperate backup of my files. On recovery of my account, I did not seek to have this data restored for me. Too much trouble and delay to ask Dropbox to re-instate it. Easier to do myself from my own backup.
Because someone else has admin control on your account, they can use those admin priveledge to access all your file. Even those in the private folder. Even if they delete the account, they can still restore it. You need to have the account transferred back to yourself, so you are the admin. Then I would assume they cannot restore it to gain access to your previous files.
I initially contacted Dropbox. Transcript below for your reference. I was extremely disappointed with Mathias on the chat, as they disconnected the chat on their end very rudely. After that... I couldn't start the chat system again to talk to someone else.
MathiasOkay so you joined your client's Dropbox Business account? That doesn't mean that they have access to all your data. You will still have a personal space (market with a purple folder) with all your private data that only you can access. So they will only have access to what you share with them.Anyway, if you want to get back to your own personal account you need to reach out to the admin of that business account and ask him/her to remove you from the business account
MeI have read on your help that an admin of a Business Advantage etc... can sign in as me and access my files.Can you please revert me back to my Dropbox Plus account? I want it done properly.
MathiasYes that is technically possible but that is only a feature that is meant to be used for emergency situationsI don't have the tools to do that I'm afraid as I'm a pre-sales adviser on Dropbox Business. The best thing to do will be to reach out to your client and ask them to remove you again
MeHAHAHaa... that is a major security issue for me. I cannot have a back door for one client to access my files for other clients. That is a MAJOR security issue for a business.Why can I not revert my own account????This is outrageous!!!
MathiasI understand that but normally I will also not recommend you to join a client's business account as a business is mostly meant for internal use and not for external sharing
Me
I am gobsmacked Dropbox has allowed the breach of security for my files and now it's up to my client to fix it.
Thank you for contacting us.Chat session disconnected.
It does seem to be a complete nighmare and I am glad I am not the only one this happened to. The fact that you can't remove yourself from a team is beyond ridiculous and the fact an admin can access your supposedely private files by logging in as you is terrifying!
Thankfully my client was happy to remove me from the account and restore me back to my own account - BUT since then my whole Dropbox has gone a bit mad and has affected my whole laptop. Everything that was stored locally on my machine in Dropbox somehow got removed?! Now everytime I want to open a file it has to re-download it using smart sync, which although irritating is fine when I have wifi available, but a disaster when I don't - the beauty of Dropbox and storing stuff locally was that I could still happily access my files when I didn't have wifi! This might just me being a bit slow and not getting the settings right?! Either way it is further annoying as my data modified sorting is now all off too, as the date of everything was showing as the data that my account was recovered!! As far as I can see I haven't lost files which is the main thing, but still I am super annoyed that clicking on one email link to what I believed was simply a shared folder can have caused me such upheaval....
I did that on my account but now I have major issues. Everything is stuck and I am getting this error:
'Your account can't be updated to leave the shared workspace. Some files are being used by other applications.'
I have manually shut down the files and it still shows: Windows Explorer is blocking the transfer
Please help!
Thanks
KC
Frustrating is an understatement! Especially when I have no choice right now but to work form home :-(
This is not an acceptable solution. It's too easy to accidently delete all of my personal files. Can Dropbox please just remove me from this team account that I joined accidentally? This is a horrible system that makes it entirely too easy for someone to steal all your files.
Hi @nvcuadra, I'm sorry to hear about this situation.
If you've joined a Dropbox Business team, for security and privacy purposes, only the team admin can remove you from the team an convert your account back to a personal one using these steps.
Let me know how it goes.
I have the same issue and the response answered my questions EXCEPT I have no access to the admin. He has left his company and no where to be found. How can I reclaim my personal account?
I literally cannot believe this is an actual thing within Dropbox. It just happened to me. I have no idea when the client can get back to me about it and I absolutely did not want this to happen. I was skeptical upon seeing the option to merge accounts but I sort of assumed there was just something new going on with Dropbox and trusted the process. I'll NEVER do that again. This is a huge problem and will most likely be ending my 7-8 year stint with Dropbox over this. Absolutely unacceptable performance.
This is the most horrible and frightening user experience I had for years.
I'm seriously considering to cancel my (and my employees) dropbox-subscription (which I have for more than 10 years) and switch to owncloud.
Slightly related experience.. I had a personal dropbox account for years and recently one of the companies I work for part time needed me to set up a Team for their company. I had no idea it would swoop up all my personal dropbox files and add to their team folders. I am having trouble getting it resolved.
Hey @SusanU,sorry to her you're having issues with this.
In this case, you'll need to reach out to your team admin and ask them to convert your account back to an individual one following the steps outlined here.
Let us know how you get on.
I accidentally added someone to my team as a member. How do I remove him from my team without blocking their entire account?
I still want him to have acces to one of the folders.
You will need to REMOVE him from the Team via the admin panel (not delete!) and then share the folder individually with him.
Note that he will need an account large enough to access it, so, if its over 2gb he will probably need to pay for an upgrade.
