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I edited an old document today, but I can't restore it to its previous version.

Question or Issue

I have been using Dropbox for many years mainly as a backup system of all my files. I thought my data was save: If I ever edit/change for example a word document and then accidentally save it over the original instead of saving it with a different name, that Dropbox would keep a copy of the original (for 30 days).

Today I have exactly that problem. I used a several year old document (as a template), changed the content but instead of saving it under a new name, just pressed "Save".

I can't see the original in the version history. It looks like the original is now lost, because it was "older than 30 days".

That to me doesn't make any sense. Even upgrading to the 180 or 365 day version would not have helped. Is that correct? If so, I will need to drop Dropbox and find another solution.

Could you please confirm?

Kind Regards,

Ralf

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Rich

ralf02 wrote:
I can't see the original in the version history. It looks like the original is now lost, because it was "older than 30 days".

Unfortunately, that's how it works.

If you have a file that hasn't changed in over 30 days (or whatever the recovery limit is on your account) and you modify it today, you can't recover the version prior to the edit. The version history only allows you to recover a version that changed within the last 30 days. Take a file that hasn't changed it 29 days, edit it today, and you'll be able to recover the pre-edit version.

ralf02 wrote:
That to me doesn't make any sense.

No, it doesn't make sense, but that's how it works now. Years ago it used to work as you'd expect; edit a file and within 30 days you could recover the pre-edit version. Then one day the functionality changed to how it works now. The kicker is the documentation was updated and Dropbox claimed that it had always worked this way and never as it did previously.

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Rich

ralf02 wrote:
I can't see the original in the version history. It looks like the original is now lost, because it was "older than 30 days".

Unfortunately, that's how it works.

ralf02 wrote:
That to me doesn't make any sense.

ralf02

Thank you for confirming.

It is interesting that someone renamed the title of my post from "Is Dropbox version history useless?" to "I edited an old document today, but I can't restore it to its previous version."

I will have a look for alternatives out there (maybe MS OneDrive???) that have a better version history.

Keith R.

Unreal. I just experienced this today as well. I edited a file on accident, and when I went to look at the previous version history to restore it, there was no previous version... despite it specifically saying you can restore to any version within the past 30 days.

This is false advertising. Dropbox cannot do exactly what it claims it can do. 😠

Rich

Keith R. wrote:
... despite it specifically saying you can restore to any version within the past 30 days.

That's exactly what it does. It allows you to restore to any version made within the past 30 days. It sucks, but that's how it works now.

Keith R. wrote:
This is false advertising.

It's not.

Version history is a feature that helps you view all of the changes made to a file or folder over a certain period, compare versions, and restore previous versions of those files and folders.

You can recover any change made within a certain period, 30 days by default. If a change was made prior to that, it can't be recovered.

Keith R.

1..The Version History feature doesn't say, "Restore this file to any version made within the past 30 days." It says, "Restore this file to any version from the past 30 days". This contradicts their Recover Older Versions page, which does refer to when the file was made.

2..Dropbox's decision to prevent access to the prior version is false advertising. This is what the plan page says:

By your own admission in a prior comment, Version History used to work properly. This is what I and many others signed onto when we purchased Dropbox years ago. I have no recollection of them ever informing users that this change was made. It seems that you do not, either.

3.. Dropbox appears to screw Individual users only. I just tested this same scenario on my Teams account and the Version History tool worked exactly like you would expect: despite the file being created four years ago, I could restore to the pre-edit version.