Is merging an individual and business account the same as connecting them?

[jblodgett]

One of the employees on our business team recently left our organization.  I tried to delete their account, but I get a warning that "This member merged an individual account with the Family House Dropbox account."  And it offers me to convert them to an individual Dropbox Basic account.

Is that the same as connecting a personal and business account?  Or something else?  I don't want them to have access to our organization's files, even if the files were created by that user.

[Lusil · Accepted solution]

Hi there @jblodgett, 

In general, you connect a personal (Basic/Plus/Professional) to a work (Business) account, but you merge two accounts into one. 

From the message that you mention, it could be that the user merged one account with the Business account when they joined the team. 

You can find more info on what the user keeps when they are converted into a Basic account here and what happens if their account is deleted in this article. 

Hope this helped to some extent!

[jblodgett]

OK, if I understand correctly, they would have merged an individual account with a business account because at the time the business account was created, they already had an individual account with the same email address.

And if I convert the account to an individual account, they will still have an account with the same email address.  And they will keep some of their files, as outlined in the help doc you linked.

Is that all correct?

[Lusil]

Hi again @jblodgett, 

When a user is invited to a team, they have the choice to merge their personal account to the team or create a new account that will join the team. You can find more info on this here. 

While in the Business team, only the team admin can change the email address of a member’s account. If the member is converted to an individual Basic account, they’ll keep the email address that they last had, but they’ll be then able to change it to another. This link gives a bit more insight on this. 

Finally, members that are converted to a Basic account have some files transferred to them during the conversion, but you can find more specifics about that in the article mentioned previously. 

Let me know if you have any other questions!

[jblodgett]

OK, I think that makes sense.  Thanks for your help!

[Lusil]

No worries, @jblodgett! Glad I could help. 

Give me a nudge if you have any other questions in the future and, in the meantime, have a wonderful day ahead!