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Un-syncing DELETED/MOVED folders instead of "un-syncing"!?!

I initiated a sync change on one our computers, un-syncing about 50% of various top level folders (and their contents) to that device. Then I noticed on our OTHER computers/devices those folders and MANY others were now missing!? Maybe Dropbox accidently "un-synced them everywhere" ... which it shouldn't have! I next logged into our Dropbox directly via browser and sure enough our entire directory structure was riddled with missing/incomplete/relocated folders

I have opened a support case for this, #26124591. But to date, only partial restorations have been made. I have since requested that our ENTIRE directory structure be correctly restored prior to March 5th, as that's the only way to resolve this huge mess Dropbox made of our files and ensure we get ALL our data back.

Does not instill confidence in Dropbox ... a caution to those of you un-syncing files/folders. Hope you have a recent backup of your own making at hand. If Dropbox can't restore your account folders/files accurately (or at all) your data be gone :-(

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Megan

Hi there, @kenr, thanks for posting here today!

I'm sorry to hear that you're having issues with that. How did you unsync these folders from your device in the first place?

In any case, I was able to locate your existing support ticket, and it seems the agent has already moved forward with the restoration of your content.

If I were you I'd be waiting for the agent's update on this. Don't hesitate to update the ticket if you have more things to ask, or any other concerns. I understand how crucial this is for you, but rest assured we'll do everything that we can in order to assist, and help you.

If you need something else, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help every step of the way.

kenr

Hi Megan thanks for responding. Don't be offended but ... are you a real person or AI Chat/Support Bot ... just curious.

Deleting and relocating folders/files due to a simple "change what is sync'd" request is a SERIOUS bug. Hope you find and solve that glitch.

"Rewind" function has been about useless from my end. It seems to be file, not folder, based ... or maybe I'm not invoking it correctly?

Anyhow ... support on your end is going to restore our entire account back to a previous day/time ... I hope. Support agent been very responsive so that's been positive.

kenr

oh forgot to answer your question about unsyncing ...

I unsynced them via DropBox desktop app on a MacBook laptop. That device created maybe one or two new Dropbox folders at most, was not the "originator" of the other 99.9% of our Dropbox contents. Those folders disappeared quickly, as expected, from the device, but unfortunately also everywhere else ... ???

kenr

forgot to answer your question ... I unsynced these folders via desktop app on MacBook Pro. NONE of these folders were initiated by this device and never got a pop-up prompt "do you want to delete these folders EVERYWHERE" (or what ever it says).

Update:

1st attempt by support at "rolling back" our entire account to a hopefully accurate state only partially successful. There a still sub-level folders missing data ... a LOT of data. There are also "Selective Sync Conflict" folders at the root level which I don't think should be there anymore AND and root directly still contains folders that ABSOLUTELY should not be there ... these were moved there when DropBox screwed up my sync change request. 🙄

Just emailed support to confirm that the rollback was indeed complete. If yes, well was not successful. Maybe we'll try yet another day/time to rollback too?

Jay

HI @kenr, @Megan is a real person, and isn't an AI chatbot.

As you're in contact with the support team, they should be able to help you with rolling back the account to an earlier date if you need it.

kenr

Hi Jay, thanks for the prompt response. sorry for my duplicate posting, a big lag on my end from when I reply till it showed up here??

"1st attempt at support rolling back our account ..." appears to have been a premature assumption on my part. About 24 hours after support said they would rollback our entire account I logged in via browser to check status ... folder structure from top level down and contents still messed up and far from accurate with about 50% of data is still missing 😑😕 The rollback day/time should have restored everything to a correct state.

Never given a timeframe from support for completion of the rollback. I assumed it wouldn't take longer than a day or two? Last contact from support was on 6th. After noting our account was still messed up, I emailed support on 7th requesting an update ... haven't heard back as of writing this.

Rich

kenr wrote:
Last contact from support was on 6th. After noting our account was still messed up, I emailed support on 7th requesting an update ... haven't heard back as of writing this.

Keep in mind that Support doesn't work weekends, so any ticket you enter towards the end of a week that requires a back and forth conversation, likely won't be fully addressed until the following week.

kenr

Was thinking that might be the case, totally not unreasonable.

Fortunately .... upon discovering the problem I immediately disconnected every device we had from "syncing" to the jumbled mess on your end.

Fortunately .... data files we do use daily still existed on a couple our devices only because they couldn't sync.

Fortunately ... I have a complete local backup on external SSD, only done intermittently (3 weeks ago) but better than losing everything.

Too much "fortunately" IMO. I'm tech-curios as to how a simple "unsync these folders" resulted in this? Not confidence inspiring, but hopefully fully recoverable from.

I've worked in IT long enough to know "Backup. Then backup the backup. Then make another backup offline of aforementioned backups. Then don't keep all them backups in one physical place!"😂

kenr

(sorry for the large line/paragraph spacing, not sure why this is happening?)

Support rolled back our entire account. Great, data and folder structure appear to be restored.

Prior to rollback, I uninstalled Dropbox from EVERY SINGLE DEVICE so no way could they interfere with rollback and access our account. After rollback, reinstalled Dropbox on our primary computer. Resynced hundreds of GB of data back to primary computer (took 6 hours) so I could make a full backup of the local offline files to SSD ... as I have zero confidence in DB.

But ... before I could make a local backup, I awoke this morning to 1,000+ "selective sync conflict" folders in root directory ... folders that NEVER EVER resided in root directory. What the ??? It's possible the correct root folders are in there, scattered amongst 1,000+ incorrect ones?

And "user error caused this" is getting old. Unmistakeable difference between”

Select Files in Finder -> hit Command+Delete -> agree to "Delete Everywhere"

and

Click DB icon -> change what to sync -> uncheck boxes -> save

Emailed support, probably have to do another full rollback after I back up (yet again) to a local SSD this iteration of our files.

What a royal pain in the *** this has become.