The one-time code gets sent to an inaccessible email address. How can I access my Dropbox account?

Ghosted_by_community_college wrote:

I know the email and password associated but cannot get past the two-factor authentication.

Your best option will be to contact the school and ask for the email address to be reactivated, even if it's temporary, so you can receive the code.

Otherwise, you can try contacting Support, but without access to the email account you may not be able to gain access to the Dropbox account. You need to maintain an active email address on your account so you can receive password resets and one-time security codes used during sign in.

https://help.dropbox.com/account-access/lost-email-access

To contact Support, visit the Support page while you're NOT signed in to a Dropbox address, including these forums, and you'll see an option for sign in issues. It's best to use an Incognito or Private browsing session to make sure you're not signed in.

https://www.dropbox.com/support/sign-in-issues

Ghosted_by_community_college wrote:

This is dumb. Dropbox should by default negate two-factor for college email accounts after an extended period of time. The email address does not exist anymore!

This isn't the normal two-step verification that you would enable on your account. This is a one-time security code that Dropbox will request if they don't recognize the device or feel that the log in attempt is suspicious. There's no way to disable that function.

Also, it's a security mechanism, and would be pretty silly to just negate it automatically after a certain period of time. That would leave the account vulnerable just for sitting idle.

Ghosted_by_community_college wrote:

I would like to access an old college Dropbox account that contains a lot of important projects.

How long ago did you last log in? 

If it was over 12 months the data will have been removed for inactivity.