I'm facing some problems when trying to stop sharing several folders I'm the owner. The share icon is present, but I am the only member of this folder. I understand that until I remove myself from the shared folder, it will remains shared; however, I can neither find the option to remove myself from the folder nor the option to "unshare folder". What should I do?? It seems that the issue of unsharing folders is very common on this forum, perhaps indicating that this feature isn't as easy to use as the Dropbox team thinks, or the documentation is not explicit as it should be.

I have the exact same problem here. Should I make a separate support request or is there a more expeditious way to bump this up to 'bug' status?

I am having exactly this same problem. The folders where the "unshare" button does not appear are both folders where 1) I am the owner; 2) there are no nested shared folders; and 3) the folders themselves are not nested within shared folders. I have tried dropbox support to no avail (they repeatedly asked me to do things I had already clearly told them I had already done, asked me to repeat information about 3 or 4 times, and then marked the ticket as "solved" despite never addressing my issue at all). (Beyond this issue, allowing us to share folders within shared folders, but then never able to unshare either folder again in future, is horrible design and something that every user should be warned about BEFORE they share any folder within a shared folder. I recently had to redo my dropbox and lost literally dozens of hours of my time "unsharing" folders because every time I had to 1) click every single subfolder of a subfolder of a subfolder of a subfolder subfolder in a series of thousands of nested files to find the shared ones (there is no way for dropbox to tell you which subfolder is the problem preventing unsharing); 2) drag the child folder elsewhere, completely destroying my folder structure, and wait minutes or hours for it to sync completely; 3) note down by hand where the folder goes back to when I am done so that I don't lose track; 4) unshare the child folder in its new temporary location, waiting minutes or hours for this change to fully sync; 5) drag that child folder back to its original location, waiting minutes or hours for it to fully sync. And then even after doing all of that, dropbox would often duplicate the folder so that I now had two separate (complete? incomplete? identical? one with missing files? no way to tell!) identically named folders, one in the "new" (original) location, and one in the place I had temporarily dragged it to in order to unshare it--so then I had to manually delete this duplicate copy and hope I had not lost any files in the process. This is a complete and total disaster--a huge waste of my time, and now I have no idea if all my files made it back to where they belong, or got lost during the copy process. This process is equally bad whether using the desktop app, the mobile app, or the online web interface inside the browser [I tried them all]. I am now seriously thinking, after almost two decades as a dropbox user, of jumping ship to another platform.)

Hi Mark. That's the problem, there is no "Unshare Folder" at the bottom of the popup. I still didn't understand quite well how shared folders work in Dropbox. That "Unshare Folder" option you mention, I see it in some folders, but some other times I don't even tho the folder is shared (with the 2 people icon), and that's why I'm saying that Dropbox should explain better how shared folders work. What are my options to unshare a shared folder with no "unshare folder" option?

The link "unshare folder" is missing.I have unshared all users one by one but I cannot unshare the folder itself

The unshare link does not appear in the desktop appThe unshare link does not appear in the ChromeThe unshare link does not appear in the Edge as well

I don't see the option to unshare a folder, even though I'm the owner

46 Replies

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Megan
Dropbox Community Moderator
2 years ago
Hey ilanalter, keep in mind that you won’t be able to unshare a folder if:

The folder contains shared folders or if the folder is inside another shared folder.

Have you checked for the first? If so, would you mind sending us a screenshot of the folders inside, just to check if there are any shared-folder, two-people icons there?
ilanalter
Helpful | Level 6
2 years ago
WOW
I am an using Dropbox for years and I did millions of share and unshare....
The folder DOES NOT contain shared folders and the folder DOES NOT inside another shared folder.
I opened a directory
I sherd it
I put files and directories in it
now I cannot unshare it.
I even opened a new directory and did all the process again - same issue
Merijn G.1
Explorer | Level 4
2 years ago
I have the exact same problem here. Should I make a separate support request or is there a more expeditious way to bump this up to 'bug' status?
JSLK-
Explorer | Level 4
2 years ago
I also have the same problem 😞
Unshare option is not shown...

Maybe Dropbox need to reset something.

Some code doesn't work obviously....
Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
2 years ago
Hey ilanalter, in order to investigate this further, can we send you an email to the address you're using here on the Community?

As for you Merijn G.1 and JSLK- , keep in mind that you won’t be able to unshare a folder if:

The folder contains shared folders

The folder is inside another shared folder

Could one of these be the case for you as well?
Merijn G.1
Explorer | Level 4
2 years ago
I think I see the problem. I want to unshare two folders. One contains a shared folder and the other one is the shared folder it contains. As you state it I can't unshare one without unsharing the other first. Is there a way to break this stalemate?
Hannah
Dropbox Community Moderator
2 years ago
Hey Merijn G.1, thanks for the update; glad we found the culprit here.

I'm afraid though, that if one of them is not moved to a different location, so they're no longer nested, you won't be able to unshare them.
ilanalter
Helpful | Level 6
2 years ago
Yes - you can send an email
I did a test....
I have an EMPTY folder which I cannot unshare
on the same level - I have another empty folder which I can unshare
YOU HAVE A BUG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
JSLK-
Explorer | Level 4
2 years ago
The folder is empty.
The folder is in toplevel.

But no "UNSHARED LINK".... there most be an code error.
Nancy
Dropbox Community Moderator
2 years ago
ilanalter, please reply back to my email, when you can and we’ll go from there.

JSLK-, are you also not seeing the option to unshare the shared subfolder?

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I don't see the option to unshare a folder, even though I'm the owner

46 Replies

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