This discussion was created from comments split from: Files disappear from folders when I move a folder.
i've been a dropbox customer pretty much since day 1. i've always paid for membership i've never used dropbox in free mode. i've always had an issue where if i don't open a certain folder for a few months and i go back into it all files except text documents and html docs are gone both locally or on dropbox.com. example…. i bought a piece of software a while back stored the iso image of the disc the key and updated setup files in the folder. i went to install that software, and all files except for the email message i stored, the text file i created with the cd key, and readme files are gone. the company i bought that software from is a pain in the neck to get a hold of and they don't give you download links to your software you purchased until you go through their support which takes about a week to get anything done with.
what i've been doing since i first signed up and after i first experienced this problem is i back my entire dropbox folder tree with all files onto my local network. so when files go away and die, i can usually restore them.
i've never contacted support for this issue. i dont usually have time to call for support when it is such an intermittent problem and there are no logs that i can see that will say when said files were deleted. no, it is not because i deleted the files either. i can tell you that much for certain. as much as i absolutely love dropbox (i actually do) i can't trust it to be a system backup tool and i can't trust the same files will be there when i need them a month or two down the road. I work in IT and sometimes i need an iso file that i stored on dropbox cause it should be available right there but more times than not, the files were silently deleted but not by me. that is the most annoying problem i see with using the cloud service. i never do the online only sync btw. i always store on device.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, @burn0u7, and for sharing your experience.
I moved your post to a thread of its own, since it seems like a unique issue.
Regarding your issue, there is in fact a log of all the actions that are taken on a Dropbox account, which is the events page.
There's no direct place to find this page, so I would suggest bookmarking it for easy access.
Can you take a look there and let us know if you see any events related to those files?
Also, after the files are gone, have you ever tried searching for them through the search bar in your Dropbox account online to see if they can be located?
Keep me posted.
This is exactly the issue I experienced - while the logs suggest that I deleted those files, I am certain I did not. A large number of files across multiple folders were deleted in a very short time and many of the deleted files were located deep within nested folders — yet only the files were removed, not the parent folders. This pattern does not match manual deletion behaviour and strongly suggests a sync issue rather than intentional user action. Unfortunately the Recover Team is only able to recover some of the missing files but not all of them. I've been using Dropbox for a very long time and this is the first time I encounter this issue. Sadly because of this incident, I can't trust it any more to be a reliable service for my important documents.
Thanks for also chiming in, @cjcarrie. If those files are synced to your desktop app, is there any chance that they were accidentally dragged/moved out of your local Dropbox folder? Because this would also equal a deletion from your Dropbox account. As for our support team, I've found your ticket with them and left them an internal note on your behalf; this way, they can also access your post here.
No, I don't believe that's the case - hundreds of files are deleted within one minute and most of them are located deep within nested folders — yet only the files were removed, not the parent folders. That is not a user action. I also noticed that most of those files are in folders that haven't been opened for a long time (months or longer) and their status all show as online folders and not on device.
Hey @cjcarrie, sorry to hear about that!
At the moment, I think the best thing you can do is discuss this with the support agent working on your case. I'm suggesting this since they have more tools and visibility into the account's logs to assist as much as possible with the restoration.
As for the deletions, and how or why they happened I believe my colleague @Jay summed everything up in the relevant post here.
If you need something else, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help every step of the way.
