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HELP: Deleted Folder Cannot be 'Rejoined' or 'Restored'

We have a folder that was deleted (we're not sure how), and now it cannot be rejoined or restored. I'm a musician and it has 4 years worth of album artwork, music, and liner notes in it. It's a heartbreaking situation and Dropbox has refused any help. We are the highest-tiered plan and after 8 emails with support, they are refusing to answer any questions, help, or give us any answers as to what has happened to this folder. Has anyone else had this issue? Getting an error when you try to rejoin a folder that was deleted? I created this folder and therefore own it. I am baffled and devastated that Dropbox is so callused and disrespectful that they would completely ignore someone losing 4 years of their work. Any advice or tips/tricks would be appreciated. This is our last resort.

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Mark

What errors are you getting @thewildrose11 ?

How long ago was it deleted and when it was deleted what plan were you on?

thewildrose11

Hello:

Thank you very much for your reply. We can't see the deletion date. We can only see the 'modified' date. I have searched the entire Dropbox drive all the way back to 2019 and the actual deletion doesn't even show.

We had a major restoration of the whole drive in July of 2023, which was a disaster in terms of Dropbox support helping with the restoration. We believe that during this restoration that they actually deleted the file somehow. Otherwise, it would show as a folder action in the history of the drive's actions, which as of today it doesn't (very strange).

S/shots attached. One shows what we see when we select 'show deleted files'. When you click on the ellipses and try to 'rejoin drive' we get an error, which is the second screenshot.

Dropbox support is saying we don't own the folder and that it was shared from outside the drive. This is impossible because we don't have any folders shared with us from 'outside the drive'. Especially not a folder filled with high-value intellectual property that I own. I begged support to tell me who the folder owner is, and they refused. They would help us at all.

Then again, there is no possibility there is a folder owner other than me because I personally created this folder in 2018. It is a mess. And, Dropbox has been truly horrific to us. Just horrific. I am terrified now, too, in seeing their Better Business Bureau rating is D- with tons of these issues about support. We thought they were a safe option and we even pay for the extra 10 years of history and restoration to stop something like this from every happening with the creative works.

It's a nightmare. Thank you for your help.

Screenshot 2024-02-12 at 3.15.56 PM copy.png

Mark

Thanks for extra info 🙂

So, if Dropbox says the folder wasnt created by you..... it either wasnt OR it was and you transferred ownership to somebody else. Sorry that sounds harsh, but, folders never 'loose' their owner - even if that person leaves the folder and deletes it without giving ownership to somebody else it is still 'theirs' and they can rejoin at any time. It doesnt just get allocated to somebody else.

What I'm wondering is when you became a part of the Business Team (I assume thats what you have from wording?) did you move your account to Dropbox Business OR did you set up a new one? My thought process here is that DfB may have been a second account for you and so the ownership is under the original email and you just added the folder to the Team.

Also, note that if a shared folder is removed/deleted then you loose all history of that in Events and Deleted Items, so, if it isnt listing there it is (annoyingly) expected behaviour.

If you think the deletion occurred in July 2023 could you get a full rollback to that date? Move all your data that is on Dropbox now to a different location (Desktop maybe?) out of Dropbox and get a rollback to July 2023. Then you will know for sure - rollbacks do exactly that and add everything back at that point in time like a snapshot.

Mark

And also from a practical point of view now - where are the backups of your data? Dropbox itself isnt a backup tool and never ever has been/or should be counted as one (note: they now have a backup tool/product BUT that works totally separate to sync and so can be counted). The rules of backup are to have the data saved/stored in multiple places, so, have you got that in place? Can you restore/recover? Having it just in one place - regardless of if thats Dropbox (or iCloud or OneDrive or Box etc.) isnt good 😞

thewildrose11

Hi There:

Thank you. I appreciate your insight. We thought of those things, too. No transfers, new accounts or such have occurred. I did change my email (I'm the owner) on the account in 2021. But, I changed it back to that old email and it still couldn't be rejoined. I have only one other person on my team who had access to this folder, and she has the same issue. We also changed her email in 2023, so we changed it back to the old email and still the same result.

Net/net: There is no 'outside source' that shared this folder. It's always been in the same place, with the same users. Even if both of us had changed our emails, we changed them back and had the same results. We're so baffled, truly, of what could be going on here.

It would help if Dropbox would at least tell us the email address associated with the folder (meaning as its owner) but they won't help at all. No one outside the business organization has ever owned this folder, had a link to it or was assigned to it as a user.

Again, really appreciate your time and thoughts.

thewildrose11

You're so right. I have learned this lesson the hard way. My heart is seriously broken. Four years of work. It makes me feel sick.

In any event, I have a 12TB G-drive on order to back-up everything. Dropbox is pretty awful, though. I do think they could at least provide us with the email of the person they're saying owns the folder. Then we can Sherlock Holmes our way to a solution. Because that email will have to be someone in the organization, seeing as for security purposes, I've never let anyone else on the drive.

Anyway, you're awesome. Thank you.

Mark

Again, clutching at straws here - change email.... I assume you did that via the Dropbox website at www.dropbox.com/account page? If so everything 'becomes' the new email (i.e. the old email vanishes and all rights 'become' the new one). So that shouldnt be it.

Have you searched emails to see if you have an email from no-reply@dropbox.com from that date? That would have the invite to join a share?

thewildrose11

We did change emails via the account page, yes. We don't have any share emails from that address.

We truly think this is a Dropbox error when they did a full drive rollback in 7/12/23. They kept making mistakes, so we had to constantly write them and have them restore missing folders. I had a running s/sheet with folders, contents and size to make sure they did it correctly. It took nearly 20 emails, as they kept doing things incorrectly. I believe, somehow, this folder was missing in their last rollback and since it was there right before that last request, I didn't check it against our content s/sheet.

In any case, you have been really lovely with some great ideas. So, you're awesome but Dropbox just sucks.