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And old 2017 was overwritten, and now I can't restore to an older version of it.

I have an old file, which was created in 2017. This file has been in my dropbox since then and was not changed until today. Today, by accident, I've overwritten that version with some unintended changes to the file. I immediately tried to recover the old version of the file, but the 2017 version is not available.
I have a Free Plan. From my understanding, Dropbox has always been able to restore files to the previous version, regardless of when it was last saved (in this case, in 2017), as long as the current change was made within the last 30 days. If a change was made more than 30 days ago, then, the old version would be lost.

Since the only change was made today, why can't I recover this file any more? Has something changed in the way Dropbox works?

Thank you for your help!

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Rich

gtakreyz wrote:
Has something changed in the way Dropbox works?

Yes, but it happened years ago.

Previously, regardless of when a file was changed, you could always recover the previous version of a file when that file was changed within the last 30 days, even if the version you were recovering was from more than 30 days ago. This is how it was for a long time until it changed several years ago. Now, you can only recover a previous version if that version of the file was saved within the last 30 days.

Simply put, store a file in Dropbox and never change it. A year later you change it. You won't be able to recover the previous version because it was saved more than 30 days ago.

Store a file in Dropbox. Change it within the last 30 days. Change it again. You'll be able to recover the version that was changed within the last 30 days, but not the original version.

When asked about the change, Dropbox stated that it had always worked that way, though that was clearly not true. It's been like that ever since.

gtakreyz

Hi Rich, thank you for the reply. If that happened years ago, I never did notice it. I’m usually very careful with my files, so it’s very unusual for me to make this mistake. I remember clearly of making this same mistake maybe a couple of years ago, but I can’t say exactly when. All I know is that last time I tried recovering such a file, it worked just as expected and the old version was correctly restored, even though it had been last changed years ago.

If Dropbox denies the change, I have to agree with you and say they lied.

Thank you for clearing that up, anyway. Time to move to my own backup server for good. Can’t trust Dropbox anymore.

Mark

gtakreyz wrote:
If Dropbox denies the change, I have to agree with you and say they lied.

They have

Its something Rich and myself have pointed out repeatedly - sadly the Help Centre articles have changed to reflect the new 'model' of how it works.