Are Dropbox and Adobe Acrobat (Document Cloud) supposed to be syncing?

[NBF]

I opened a Dropbox file in Adobe Acrobat Premium and later discovered Dropbox has (quietly) given Adobe Acrobat Premium read/write access to my entire Dropbox folder hierarchy. Every Dropbox file has been automatically uploaded to the Adobe Document Cloud and deleting a file or folder in Adobe Acrobat deletes it from Dropbox and vice versa. This means that Dropbox and Adobe now sync with one another across the entire Dropbox folder structure. Is this the expected behavior?

Thanks,

Neil

Additional details:

I use Dropbox on my iPhone 11. I recently purchased Adobe Acrobat Premium on my iPhone (to remove blank pages from Dropbox pdf files). I later noticed missing files in Dropbox and it turns out that cleaning up the files from Adobe Acrobat Premium also deleted them from Dropbox. This is a surprising feature if not a bug. My use case is as follows:

1) Open the pdf in Dropbox on iPhone.
2) Click on the blue “Open” icon.
3) From the “Open with” menu that opens select “Adobe Acrobat Reader”.
4) This opens the pdf file in Adobe Acrobat Premium.
5) I remove the blank pages in Adobe Acrobat Premium using the “Organize” feature, save it, wait a few seconds for the new file to be transferred back to Dropbox.

After I refresh the file in Dropbox, the blank pages have been removed. So far, so good. However, something unexpected happens when I delete the file from Adobe Acrobat Premium after the file has been saved to Dropbox. The file is deleted from both Adobe Acrobat Premium (expected) and Dropbox (unexpected).

I found out about this behavior when I noticed that there are many recently deleted files in Dropbox which I have no memory of ever deleting. I am surprised that deleting files in Adobe Acrobat Premium can delete them in Dropbox without warning. This is a serious issue. Had the Dropbox restore feature not existed, these files would have been permanently lost without any warning.

[Jay]

Hi @NBF, thanks for messaging the Community!

It sounds like the Dropbox service could have been connected, or was already connected to your Adobe account, which could lead to this behavior.

You can see all services that have connections to your Dropbox account from here.

If you don’t want your Adobe account to be connected, you can remove the connection, and confirm it was removed inside the Adobe app

Let me know how it goes!

[NBF · Accepted solution]

Hi Jay,

Thank you for the response. Apparently I've been using Dropbox/Adobe Integration without knowing what it entailed:

https://help.dropbox.com/installs-integrations/third-party/adobe-partnership#pay

Based on my chat with Dropbox support, the way this integration has been implemented, when I use Adobe to edit a Dropbox pdf file, Adobe gets access not only to a copy of that file, but to the entire Dropbox folder structure.

When I gave Adobe Acrobat Reader access to files and folders in my Dropbox, I thought that would be on a file-by-file basis, and read-only; instead, Dropbox has given read-write access to EVERY file. Adobe has in the past had security breaches and Dropbox giving Adobe access to all my Dropbox files on the Dropbox server is a security risk. I think this integration should instead have been implemented by transferring a single file back and forth between Dropbox and Adobe.

Thanks,

Neil

PS. BTW, thanks for the link you provided. It showed that Adobe Acrobat Reader was still connected to my Dropbox account. I disconnected it. I also removed the connection on my iPhone. I still need to figure out how to reorganize pdf files (e.g. remove blank lines and perhaps do OCR) without using Adobe/Dropbox Integration.

[NBF]

Jay,

I posted a response, but it was tagged for moderation and has yet to appear.

Neil

[Jay]

Thanks for the message, I can see the reply now that it was moderated.

I'm glad to hear we were able to determine why this occurred.

To answer your query, you could try exporting files to Adobe to see if it can scan/OCR your document for you. There is also a built-in scanner in the Dropbox mobile app which does the OCR for you, assuming you're on a paid plan.

[NBF]

Thank you! I will give the built-in scanner in the Dropbox mobile app a try.

Neil

[Jay]

You're welcome, @NBF, enjoy your weekend!