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My files have gone missing unexpectedly

After 13 years of using dropbox, I've discovered that some of the important files in one folder just gone missing. The folder seems to be empty, despite that I know for sure there are gigabytes of data there.

I did not manually delete anything, nothing can be found in the folder history, no deletion history anywhere. In fact, I have not deleted anything from my dropbox in the last 5 years.

The files were there about a few months ago, now the entire folder just disappeared.

Because I'm a Basic/free user, I can't even get to the support team. This is ridiculous. How could Dropbox just corrupt the data of a user? How could Dropbox just delete files without user consent?

Anyone could help me out here?

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Hannah

Hi there, @Smilence, and sorry to hear about this.

Dropbox wouldn't really delete your files; did you check your emails to see if you received any emails about file deletions in your account?

Also, were those files shared with someone else, or simple, non-shared files?

I'd suggest checking your deleted files, your events and your shared page, in the case that the files were shared.

Let me know what you find.

Smilence

Checked and no emails regarding any file deletion;

Those files were simple, non-shared files;

Delete files showing empty;

Events tracking back to a few years showing no deletion events;

Shared folders are not showing those files as they weren't shared.

This is just super, super weird. Please help. Thank you.

Hannah

Thanks for the update, @Smilence.

It is weird indeed. Perhaps it's a browser issue; can you login to your account from a different browser and let me know if you see the same thing?

Or is it possible you're looking in the wrong account?

Smilence

I've tried to log in using a different browser, and then using the app on my mobile phone, both showing the same result. I even tried to download the desktop application, but still no luck.

The account is the correct one, I only have one Dropbox account.

One thing worth nothing is that my Dropbox has been nearly full(less than 1GB of space left) for the last 5 years. However, I don't feel like this is the root cause.

Hannah

It is pretty strange, indeed.

If you want, we can switch to email, so I can take a look into your account and see what I can find.

Smilence

Hi Hannah,

That would be wonderful and appreciate it.

Could you please contact me via email, and I'll provide anything you need to identify a solution.

Thanks

Hannah

Thanks, @Smilence!

I just emailed you, so we'll continue investigating there.

Creativenap

Hi @Smilence! I saw your post on a Reddit thread, too. Have you been able to recover your data?

I've just had something similar happened to me last week, shortly after I installed the Dropbox app to my new-ish MacbooPro OS 14 Sonoma. I have tons of files and folders missing, including my recent rebrand assets in Adobe Illustrator (the raw/editable AI files)!

7 days and 9 support agent later, I still don't have my data recovered. How is this acceptable?! I would love to learn about the outcome of your situation and I'm hoping it's positive one so I can at least have some hope.

Thanks!

Nicole

Creativenap

Hi @hahaha, were you or someone from Dropbox able to help @Smilence recover his files?

Hannah

Hey @Creativenap, thanks for the nudge here and sorry to see that your files are missing.

I can see from your ticket number that you're already in contact with our specialists about your issue.

Unfortunately, here on the Community, we don't have access to info specific to your account, so there's not much we can do.

However, you can continue working with the agent that's currently on your case on that ticket, to get to the bottom of this.

We've passed your comments along and raised the priority of the ticket, so you should be getting a response the soonest possible.

Creativenap

Hey @Smilence did you have any luck recovering your files?