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Empty Folders Keep being deleted

A week ago loads of empty folders I have on Dropbox were deleted. Initially I spent loads of time looking at them and restoring them, Dropbox then deleted the ones I had restored. Now I waste no time and I restore the empty folders and Dropbox then deletes them a day or so later. It is happening so fast that it cannot be a human but I don't know how to stop Dropbox deleting the folders I want - even if they are currently empty

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Mark

Have you restored one and then clicked on 'Restore Previous Versions' to see which device is doing it?

My guess here is a corrupt database is doing it

SimonThursday

It is only Folders that have nothing in that are deleted. I can find nothing to tell me about the version history on empty folders (or maybe once I have restored them there is no version history as they are back to the original first version)

Rich

@SimonThursday wrote:
It is only Folders that have nothing in that are deleted. I can find nothing to tell me about the version history on empty folders

If it's the same folders being deleted, but a text file in one of them and see if it still gets deleted. If it does, look at the version history of that file to see which device is deleting the file, because Dropbox is not able to delete a file or folder on its own.

SimonThursday

If there is a file in the folder the folder does not get deleted. Once when I restored one folder I also restored spreadsheets I had previously deleted. The next time empty folders were deleted that folder wasn't deleted but after I deleted the spreadsheets the following time the folders were deleted that Folder was also removed.

Nancy

Hey @SimonThursday!

Once you’ve restored one of your empty folders again, can you immediately follow these steps to see details on their version history?

Besides that, you can also try checking your Events page.

Let me know if you find something more.

SimonThursday

There is nothing in the activity section and the events section says I deleted all the files - and I didn't

Megan

Hi @SimonThursday, just to be clear: do you still have issues restoring your content?

Have you tried signing out of the desktop app, just so that we can exclude that as a possibility of the device -specifically a program there- erasing your content?

SimonThursday

Hi Megan, I do not have any trouble restoring the deleted folders.

The problem is that folders that are empty keep being deleted.

On 20 September 2023 about 1,855 empty folders were deleted. I realised on 22 September and manually restored a lot. Then on 24 September about 376 folders were deleted - probably all the ones I'd restored. On 25 September I then clicked on restore those 376 and afterwards I restored the 1,855 folders. On 26 September 1,866 folders were deleted, I probably restored them on 27 September and on 28 Septyember 1,866 folders were deleted, I restored them and then on 29 September 1,870 folders were deleted. I have restored them and since then (today is 3 October 2023) it has not happened again.

If there is a file in a folder it is not deleted, if it is empty it will be.

Walter

Hey @SimonThursday, sorry to jump in here, but I just wanted to mention that if you notice this happen again in the future, you can feel free to contact our support team as they'd be better equipped to assist further with account and device specific information.

Let us know of any updates!

SimonThursday

My solution has been to migrate to OneDrive though I accept that the deletion of the empty folders has stopped.

I am really disappointed with the DropBox help - I did contact Support and it was pointless and all the comments above fail to understand the problem: Folders that were empty were deleted, I restored them and later they were deleted again. This continued for a week or so.

Walter

Thanks for keeping us in the loop and your sharing your feedback on this @SimonThursday

Could you also share your ticket ID so that we can look it up in our system to make sure we've covered everything?

SimonThursday

I have moved on, this is all too little and too late

Wesley L.

I just wanted to let you know, you aren't imagining things. I've been having the same issue. Empty folders disappear. I recreate them, they disappear. I don't have this issue with any other files on my computer that aren't within Dropbox, so I can only assume that it's a Dropbox function that's deleting empty folders automatically.