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Dropbox is telling me I'm using ~6GB of storage when I have much less.

Hi there,

I've recently switched to the free version of Dropbox after being a member for many, many years, because the new features that allow opening and commenting in documents within Dropbox wasn't easy to turn off globally and doesn't work for my work processes.

I've deleted almost all my files, have never used backup, and left almost all shared drives. I've also permanently deleted already deleted files.

Dropbox continues to tell me that I'm using so much more storage than it seems that I am.

Does somebody have guidance on where that is coming from?

Here are screenshots:

It's telling me most of this space is used by 'Regular files':

Here are my folders & files (and the space it says they take):

As I mentioned, I also did the 'permanent delete' of my deleted files. Is there a significant delay to that being taken into account?

Any thoughts welcome...

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Accepted answers

Hannah

Thanks for taking the time to post to our Community, @linia.

Let's see what we can find out about this.

Regarding the deleted files, they don't take up space in your account, so permanently deleting them wouldn't free up any extra space.

Now, since all the sizes of the folders in your screenshot show the > (bigger than) symbol, would it be possible to open each folder to find out the exact size for each one and see if that brings up the size to the one shown in your settings?

I understand that'd be pretty tedious, but I just want to be sure.

Let me know what you find!

All comments

Hannah

Thanks for taking the time to post to our Community, @linia.

Let's see what we can find out about this.

Regarding the deleted files, they don't take up space in your account, so permanently deleting them wouldn't free up any extra space.

I understand that'd be pretty tedious, but I just want to be sure.

Let me know what you find!

linia

Hi Hannah,

Thanks so much for the prompt help.

Digging into each folder and each subfolder manually did allow me to find the hidden large files and I have deleted them.

One note on this experience:
- I know Dropbox has the knowledge and software capable of displaying the size of each folder, because it clearly keeps track of this to total it for my account.

It feels, from the user perspective, that this is purposefully obfuscated and difficult. Today is the second day I've spent trying to figure this on my own.

In any case, thanks for your quick help on the forum.

All the best,
Linia

Nancy

Hi Linia! Thanks for your feedback on this. I’ve made sure our team can see it, as well.

Glad to hear you were able to resolve this, and let us know if you need something else.