Child Item

Old version of files overwriting the latest version on the cloud

Hello community,

We are looking for assistance on probable causes and preventive measures to take place following an incident with one of our computers, where the files present in Dropbox folder of the local PC were overwritten to the Dropbox online ( cloud ).

Sometime last month, one of the users who works in our team switched on a PC assigned to him after a long duration of more than one month. What happened then was, as soon as the PC got connected to the internet, files and folders present in the local Dropbox folder got written, or synced to the files in the cloud. For a few files that already existed, the 'conflicted copies' have been created with same mentioned in the filename along with a date stamp.

But for other files and folders, it has been overwritten and in some cases, the folders which were not even present in the Dropbox cloud, have been uploaded to the cloud.

Upon doing net search, we are under the impression that this is not normal behaviour, and Dropbox is designed to not overwrite older versions from local, if present, to the newer or latest version already in the cloud. We require information on (1) Probable causes and (2) Prevention steps. Specifications as below:

Dropbox version at the time of incident : Probably 229.4.5197

Windows version and build : Windows 10 Pro (10.0.19044.1741.VER2009 21H2)

Sync type: Selective sync

Dropbox plan: Free plan for the user, who connected to a Paid ( Professional ) Dropbox

Thank you

Find more posts tagged with

Desktop

Sync

Windows

Insightful

Closed - Partially Delivered

Delivered

Comments

Research_Mex

EDIT : We have referred the below official link, but in our case , no user were editing the files. The said user just connected his laptop with old data to the internet.
https://help.dropbox.com/organize/conflicted-copy

Walter

Hey @Research_Mex - thanks for bringing to our attention.

If the version of the Dropbox desktop app you mentioned is the correct one, it's quite outdated now. You can find the most recent stable version ( 234.4.5591) on this page.

As for the possible reasons for conflicted copies, you can take a look at this help center article.

Let us know if you have any follow up questions.

Research_Mex

@Walter 1) We understand that the old version of Dropbox version was present. The version has been updated now. Our question is more towards why it occurred ? was there any technical issues / bugs issue etc with that version ?
2) We have already gone through that link. Please check my first response to the question which has the EDIT

Walter

I won't be able to tell for sure without account and device specific information @Research_Mex

You can have the person who was affected by this contact us directly for further investigation if needed.

Let me know if you have anything else to add or ask in the meantime.

Research_Mex

@Walter Thank you for the responses. We shall check and update the device specifics information here if available. I suspect most of the info might not, as the affected device/PC has been restored already.

Walter

I see, keep us posted anyhow @Research_Mex

Nancy

Hope you don’t mind me nudging you, @Research_Mex. Do you still need help with this, by any chance?

Let us know if everything looks OK on your end now.