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I received an email that content shared with me will be permanently deleted. Can it be recovered?

I got this message via email

Some content currently shared with you that’s owned by the xxx team on Dropbox will be permanently deleted

i don't recall being part of a Dropbox team and this folder was owned by me, not anyone else.

looking up in my account avatar, i am not a member of any team.

i have no idea why i got this email, but now I'm missing a very important folder and i cant find a way to retrieve it.

Dropbox allegedly has the option of retrieving deleted files within 30 days

less than 2 weeks have passed since receiving this mysterious email but the files are not in the deleted files folder....!!!!

and i cant find a way to contact anyone in Dropbox support to sort this out.

HELP!!!

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Mark

NAK wrote:
i don't recall being part of a Dropbox team and this folder was owned by me, not anyone else.

You must have been to have received this email - I also got it. The email was not you as owner but you as a member of it as part of a shared folder.

NAK wrote:
I'm missing a very important folder and i cant find a way to retrieve it.

Dropbox allegedly has the option of retrieving deleted files within 30 days

Has the deadline on the email passed? If so, as the email said, its not recoverable. Data is recoverable if deleted by you. However, this isnt, this was deleted by Dropbox (with warning) and once that happens its lost permanently.

NAK wrote:
and i cant find a way to contact anyone in Dropbox support to sort this out.

There is no way to recover the data I'm afraid. Its permanently deleted - as the email said, if the date of deletion has passed.

NAK

But im not a member of any team.

And I should have 30 days to recover a deleted file.

This is crazy!

There must be some way to reach someone in support to retrieve the folder.

The whole idea of Dropbox is having secured and backed up files on the cloud.

If they can just email me that in a few days its gone, what's the point?

Megan

Hey @NAK, let's jump right into this!

Even if your account isn't part of a team, there's a chance that you were a member of a shared folder coming from this team.

When you visit your sharing tab online, can you find the folder there? Also, what do you see when reviewing your events page?

Keep me posted, and we'll take it from there!

Mark

NAK wrote:
And I should have 30 days to recover a deleted file.

But it hasn't been deleted by you - it's been removed because the owner of the folder (i.e. the Team owner) has not paid to host the services on Dropbox any more, and as such, as per its terms, the data is removed.

NAK wrote:
There must be some way to reach someone in support to retrieve the folder.

If you didnt restore by the date, as the email said, its not recoverable. Its been completely removed - this is how its always been with Dropbox.

NAK wrote:
The whole idea of Dropbox is having secured and backed up files on the cloud.

Dropbox syncing is NOT a backup solution. It never ever has been (there is now Dropbox backup which is a very, very different system). However, the system here isnt a backup tool. It shouldnt and never has been designed to do so. For example if you corrupted a file by mistake on a device that corrpution would replicate to all devices. If there was no previous edited version in 30 days of that file it wouldnt be restorable - because it wasnt deleted it was changed things work differently. That isnt how a backup works.

NAK

I was the owner of that folder.

I never joined a team. I can't find any sign I was ever part of a team.

This was my folder.

I received a less than 2 week notice before deletion. While I was abroad and unable to even read the email.

I am supposed to have 30 days to retrieve.

I got less than 14

NAK

Hey Magan

Thank you for your response.

I looked into both links you sent.

The folder does not appear in the sharing tab.

In the events page there are two separate lines related to the folder.

The first one, according to date, is a line that says that I added a CSV file (the file that lists the folder that was deleted.

The second says I removed my own access to this folder.

Clearly, I did not do any of these. I did not add a CSV file and I did not remove access to any folder.

And how can one remove his own access to a folder?

Nancy

Hey @NAK! Let me jump in here, too.

Can you send me a screenshot of what you see at your Events page? I’d also like one more visual of what you see here.

Mark

NAK wrote:
The second says I removed my own access to this folder.

And how can one remove his own access to a folder?

You can leave a share via http://www.dropbox.com/share by clicking on the option to do so. If Dropbox, in this case, removes them this would also do the same thing.

NAK wrote:
The first one, according to date, is a line that says that I added a CSV file (the file that lists the folder that was deleted.

This was a file added by Dropbox, as per the email, telling you what was being removed.

You may not have done it, but, Dropbox did - with warning. Although, I agree, 14 days wasnt a long time (and I raised that myself when I got the email). However, unfortunaely the files arent recoverable via Dropbox now.

Do you still have any computers connected to Dropbox that had them locally? You should still have them there.

NAK wrote:
I never joined a team. I can't find any sign I was ever part of a team.

My guess is that, at some point, even many many years ago you set it up as a Team - albeit by accident (as was quite common at the time). The way Teams and Shares work is very similar but with some slight differences. Its also possible to be the only person in a team so you may not have noticed - until they emailed you.