Missing Pictures

[Trumpy57]

Hi. I've lost some important pictures of my daughter's wedding and other events that were downloaded from my camera into Dropbox and then copied into my Mac's Photos library. This was back in 2018. But virtually all of my pictures from that year which had been downloaded into Dropbox have now disappeared from Photos and Dropbox. Any idea what might have happened or if they might still exist somewhere? Should they still exist somewhere in my Mac's hard drive even if they're not in the Photos library? Any advice or suggestions? Thanks. Pete

[Lusil]

Hi there @Trumpy57, let's see what we can do here. 

Since you copied the images to your Photos library, they would be considered separate from the ones in your Dropbox folder. 

As for the ones you're looking for in your Dropbox account, could you have a look at your events page for any recent record on what could have happened?

Have a look and let me know what you find, thanks!

[Trumpy57]

Hi Lusil

I've looked at the events page but it just says no activity.

[Mark]

Do you mean 'no activity' at all? As in the Events log is totally blank?

Does anything, at all, show at www.dropbox.com/home ?

[Trumpy57]

If I click on events page as Lusil suggests, all I get is 'no activity yet'. There are some folders with images but only dating back to 2019. Nothing before that. The wedding pix and various others were downloaded to Dropbox back in 2017 but all disappeared in 2018.

[Mark]

If its not showing any activity on Events I'm afraid they are unrecoverable - that list is wiped, I believe, after 6 months (the maximum recovery window for paid plans). So, as nothing shows there the files are not recoverable via Dropbox. 

You will need to try any linked devices or your own backups I'm afraid. 

[Trumpy57]

I did think that might be the case. I also think the loss of these pictures has something to do with Time Machine and problems when iPhoto switched to Photos on my Mac. But this problem only seemed to occur when the Dropbox option to download my pictures came up for the first time - it wasn't something I'd asked to do but thought I'd give it a go as backup for my pix. How wrong that decision proved to be. Someone else told me they should still be on my hard drive somewhere but I have little confidence I'll ever get them back. My daughter might kill me! But thanks for taking the time to reply - much appreciated. Cheers