Mac Deleted My Files During a "Move To" Operation - How to Recover in Dropbox?

[vexir]

Hi all,

I was moving some files OUT of Dropbox using a Move-To operation in Mac (I should have done Copy, I know), but for whatever reason those files never showed up in their destination folder. They also don't show up in the Dropbox folder.

Now, a day later, I see the Dropbox app syncing 300k files, "deleting..." all of them. I've tried going to Deleted Files on web which shows "xyz.abc file and 45,000 other files", which I tried to restore but nothing happened. 

What do I do here? Do I let the app finish whatever operation it's doing and then hope that I can do a clean restore? Is there a way Dropbox can get my files back? This is years and years of historical files that I need. I just had to downgrade my account from Plus so I don't know how to get Dropbox's support here.

[Hannah]

Hey @vexir, thanks for reaching out to our Community today.

You are exactly right in your assumption that you need to allow the application to finish syncing all these events.

Right now it's probably trying to sync the deletions and perhaps the restorations as well, since you restored the event in its entirety. 

Just give it some time, so the application can finish syncing. 

In the meantime, your account online should be back to normal. Do your files appear to be back there?

Let me know.

[vexir]

I'm honestly not sure. I don't remember the original size of the folders, so I don't know if all the files were successfully undeleted. How would I check?

[vexir]

Oh also worth mentioning - I keep hitting "Restore" on all the files in the Deleted Files page, but they just keep coming back in "Deleted Files". Dropbox isn't actually restoring them. This might be because there are TONS of little files? More than 44,000, it looks like - I have some large projects in there.

[Jay]

Hi @vexir, if there are a lot of files, it can take time for the restoration to complete.

Just to be certain, I'd recommend getting in contact with the support team directly for further assistance on the recovery of the files.