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History of deleted and newly created folder

Hello,

we have a team folder in our company Dropbox that was accidentally deleted. Usually I would just restore the folder, but unfortunately in this case a folder with the same name was created shortly after this folder was deleted. Now I can only see the version history of this new folder and it does not contain any of the deleted files I actually want to restore.

Is there a way to get the history of the original folder back?

Regards,

Alex

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Accepted answers

Hannah

Hey @Alex Ximea, how are you today?

Do you perhaps see the folder in your shared tab, so you can add it back from there?

All comments

Jay

Hi @Alex Ximea, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Just for clarification, are you able to see the previous folder on the events page or the deleted files page?

This will help me to assist further!

Alex Ximea

Hi Jay,

thank you for your reply.

No, I can not see the previous folder on my deleted files page. On the events page for the new folder, I can only see events of the new folder, but not of the previous one.

I can, however, see that the folder was deleted in the "Activities" list.

Jay

Are you the team admin on the account in order to try to locate the deleted folder or version history?

Mark

@Alex Ximea

Hi, was this a shared folder at all?

Alex Ximea

I am not the team admin on this account, but I talked to the admin and he can also not locate the deleted folder or its history.

Alex Ximea

The folder was shared with multiple other team members.

Walter

Hey @Alex Ximea, sorry to jump in here, but have you tried using our Rewind feature to restore this folder back to a previous state?

Alex Ximea

Hi Walter,

we tried using the Rewind feature, but unfortunately it also only shows the history of the folder after it was created again. We also looked at rewinding the whole Dropbox, but on the top level the feature is just greyed out.

Nancy

Hi Alex, I hope it’s OK if I jump in, as well.

Is there any chance that the folder was permanently deleted?

Also, when was it approximately deleted from your Dropbox account?

Alex Ximea

Hi Nancy,

the folder was deleted at 5:51 pm CEST on October 13th 2022.

The folder was deleted from a local PC to free up space on the hard drive while I mistakenly assumed the Dropbox app was not running. I discovered the error after a few seconds and disabled the app (stopping synchronization). At that point two folders had already been deleted. We could restore one of them without any issues. Since they were both deleted in exactly the same way, I have no reason to think the lost folder was permanently deleted.

Hannah

Hey @Alex Ximea, how are you today?

Do you perhaps see the folder in your shared tab, so you can add it back from there?

Alex Ximea

Hi Hannah,

thank you for your reply.

In the meantime, our Administrator received a similar suggestion via email (he had tried to reach out separately) and was able to restore the folder. He followed these steps to restore the folder:

Click here please: https://www.dropbox.com/share/recents
Navigate to any folders that say "Not Added to Dropbox"
Hover over the folder name and choose "Add to Dropbox"
Try share any restored folders as you normally would

Thank you all for your support.

Best regards,

Alex

Hannah

Thank you for the update, Alex!

I appreciate you taking the time to let us know this was resolved.

If you come across any issues, please don't hesitate to give us a shout.

Have a great weekend!