Accidentally logged in using Google SSO instead of username/password, now my files are gone

Hi mhuang45, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

As you mentioned you used the Google SSO to sign in, are you using a Gmail account, or another domain in general?

Do you have any other devices that could be logged into the old Dropbox account?

This will help me to assist further!

Good question!

I believe it's a Gmail account, but the domain is managed by my school alumni.

 So previously I've used [Removed as per Community Guidelines]
 / password to get in. This time I had use Google SSO (that same email) to log in. And no unfortunately I don't have any other device logged into the old account so I'm really worried... 

Thanks for the details, I've removed the email for your own privacy and security.

Are you certain that this was the same account you've always used to log in, and not another very similar email address provided by the school? Are there any other email addresses you could've used to log in to Dropbox?

Do you see any recent events or deleted files on the Dropbox account which is currently logged in on the site?

Hi Jay,

Yes I'm certain this is the email I've always used to log in, as this is my professional email and hence why I had the "grandfathered" storage limits on it and using it for more than 10 years. I don't see any recent activity on the account for file removals...

Hey mhuang45. If you look into your email address’s inbox/spam folder, do you see any recent emails from Dropbox? 

If yes, can you see any names of files/folders that were shared with you? It may be worth using them as keywords to search the Dropbox website (feel free to send us a screenshot of what you see, as well).

Finally, the laptop that you sent over for repair, is it possible that it contains your local Dropbox folder (in case you previously had the desktop app installed there)?

Hi Nancy,

Thanks for the advice, I did manage to find a really old email from Dropbox saying the account was in a locked state, is it possible to recover the items? The email was sent to spam and never made it to my inbox so I'm totally unaware of this. Due to the use of the desktop version, I didn't even know it was not syncing to the cloud so unfortunately the most recent files are probably in the desktop app as a local file. Is there a way to at least recover the ones in the cloud, even though it might not have synced the recent files?

I'm also deeply disappointed that after the laptop repair, it could not repair the Dropbox desktop app, none of the files in the desktop app can be recovered...

Thanks for the additional information and the screenshot too mhuang45​ 

I'm afraid that there's not much we can do from our end to restore the account or any of the files that were stored in it at this point since the account was permanently deleted after being in locked state, as the email you found mentions. 

I wish I had a better answer than this, and please let me know if you have anything else to ask, Joey. We're always a post away. 

Hi Walter,

If the files cannot be restored, what about the previous storage limits? Are there really no way to restore any historical files??

Hey mhuang45, I hope it's okay for me to jump in here as well.

This is a tough situation, to be honest.

Can you tell me when the last time you accessed your account and files on dropbox.com using your account credentials was?