Child Item

My main file doesn't show recent updates (last one was 7 months ago) and there's no history.

Device

samsung galaxy s8 and s21 and antique win 7 laptop
Operating System/Browser (if using the web)

one old android one current, one old windows
Question or Issue

my main file suddenly is like 7 months old, 7 months lost and no history for thirty days. this is horrible that this can happen, what's the point of backup like this?

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Nancy

Thanks for posting here, @juntjoo. Let’s have a look into this.

To clarify, you don’t see your old updates on any Dropbox platform, not even on www.dropbox.com, correct?

Do you remember which Dropbox platform you used, in order to edit this file?

In the meantime, I’d also like you to visit your Events page here; if you further scroll down, do you see any mentions of the last updates you made?

Finally, I'd like a screenshot of what you see when checking the version history of your file.

Let me know what you find.

michaelin

I have this same issue - and I hope it's OK to invade this thread instead of starting a new one.

I have a file in a shared folder, it's been there for over a year. I opened it, edited it and saved it this morning, mistakenly.

I saved it under a different name and figured I would just restore the version from earlier today/yesterday before the edit.

The file has no version history! Only the edit I did today is shown. What gives?

Nancy

No worries at all, @michaelin! Thanks for posting here, as well.

Can you also visit your Events page and let me know what you see there? Are you able to see all the updates/edits you’ve made to this file?

michaelin

I can see it here:

I can't scroll down that far to see if it's there from the beginning of last year. I do a lot of Dropbox stuff and it's going to take me all day.

Still. If I edit it there should be an original somewhere? No?

michaelin

Also, I appreciate my version history only covers 30 days in my current subscription. But I was not under the impression that it would work like this.

I thought a file I edited would have it's old version still there for 30 days. Was I misunderstanding this?

juntjoo

The events page showed I deleted it(somehow) a couple days ago. I recently stopped using my main phone as it's currently out of service so I'm hoping that is where the latest version is before it somehow got deleted.

So to avoid this in the future from accidental deletions, how do you protect any very important files with Dropbox?

Nancy

Out of curiosity, how did you open this document exactly before editing it?

Did you open your local Dropbox folder and double click on it, or did you open Microsoft Word instead and access it from your Recent files?

This will help me isolate the issue a bit more.

juntjoo

You still have the latest version tho, just renamed right?

michaelin

I double clicked it in the folder. I hadn't opened it since february or march last year.

michaelin

I have the edited file yes. But I want my original file back to the way it was before I edited it.

Rich

michaelin wrote:
I thought a file I edited would have it's old version still there for 30 days. Was I misunderstanding this?

Yes, you have misunderstood it, though most everyone does and at no fault of theirs because it USED to work that way.

Version history allows you to recover any file that has changed in the last 30 days. Meaning you can recover a version that has CHANGED, not the pre-edit version that existed more than 30 days ago.

For instance, you have a file that's a year old and hasn't changed in that time. You make a change to it today. You can't recover the original because it last changed more than 30 days ago. Now take that same file but you last modified it 29 days ago. You change it again today. You can recover the version from 29 days ago (because it's within the last 30), but you can't recover the original.

Originally it wasn't like that. If you had a file that was last modified a year ago and changed it today, you could recover the year-old file. Dropbox quietly changed how it works to what we have now, though this change happened many, many years ago.

michaelin

Well, this is a dealbreaker for me then. I'll have to look into another way of working.

I was using Dropbox as a safe way to keep my files around - but this is not the way I need it to work.

Any ideas on better options?

michaelin

Maybe I'll write a script that touches all the Dropbox files every 28 days. That should give me the security I need.

Very odd that Dropbox would make such a massive change/downgrade of service and not inform customers.

Rich

michaelin wrote:
Very odd that Dropbox would make such a massive change/downgrade of service and not inform customers.

To be clear, this change happened like 9 years ago, and the documentation was updated at that time. The wording, though a bit vague, now says you "can recover versions of a file made within the last 30 days."

michaelin

Ah, yes. But who reads stuff like that ...