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jermaine-floyd's avatar
jermaine-floyd
New member | Level 2
2 months ago

Search API not returning deleted files

Hi everyone, I'm using the Search API files/search_v2 and wanted to search for deleted files. The documentation claims that `file_status` can be used to restrict the search to the given file status....
API
Developers
Spencer H's avatar
Spencer H
Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff
2 months ago

Hi there,

Thanks for bringing this up, it looks like this behavior may be an issue on our side and we’ll take a closer look. In the meantime, you can use the following API endpoints as an alternative approach to locate deleted items.

We recommend using the /files/list_folder and /files/list_folder/continue endpoints with the `include_deleted` parameter set to `true`. These endpoints allow you to retrieve metadata for both active and deleted entries within a specified folder. Additionally, you can set the recursive parameter to `true` to search through all subfolders.

Once you retrieve the results, look for entries with `".tag": "deleted"`. You can then cross-check these entries against the result's file name with the file name you’re searching for to confirm whether that file has been deleted.

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