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RebeccaLee's avatar
RebeccaLee
Helpful | Level 5
2 years ago

Large Number of Files vanished from Dropbox - is this a Dropbox system issue?

Yikes ... Around 15k files (maybe more) have been deleted from my dropbox and no one connected to my account made any changes to the files when this happened.  When I try the rewind feature on the folders where the files were deleted, it doesn't show any deletion activity or give me an option to rewind to a version of the folders that have the files in them, so dropbox seems to think no files were deleted.  But they are all gone, and I can see the deletion activity in the "events" log of my account.  I got notifications yesterday saying thousands of files were deleted, and the missing files appear in the deleted files section of Dropbox saying they were deleted by a person who did not delete them.  I am scrambling to figure out how to rewind my folders and restore the files (rather than going through and restoring 15k or so one at a time) and also very concerned that this may be a Dropbox glitch of some kind? Or a hack? It's not making any sense.  I googled to see if others are having problems with Dropbox these past few days and am not finding anything.  And of course Dropbox support isn't available today. 

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  • Mark's avatar
    Mark
    Icon for Super User II rankSuper User II
    2 years ago

    There is no Dropbox issue. 

    Dropbox cannot delete files unless its actively told to do so - either via device or a person. So somebody or something connected to your account did it. If the system says Person A did it - they did it. Even if they dont realise it. 

     

    A common error is dragging things out of a share and not realising OR having Dropbox on a shared / external drive and it becoming disconnected. 

     

    You can use rewind once the list updates - if its not showing yet its possibly not finished updating the changes from the other person

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