Account deleted? Files gone?

[Jochem8]

Hi everybody.

Something strange happened. A few days ago I got a message on my computer from the Dropbox app that I was logged out. I tried logging back in, didn't work and was too busy to look into it further.

Today, I tried to login again, to no avail. Then used the 'forgot password' function, but no e-mail came through. Then I tried to create a new account, using the same e-mail address I had been using for years. It worked, new account created. There were no files in this 'new' account. Does this mean my account got deleted and all of my files are gone? That would be a disaster.

I hope someone can help.

[Walter]

Hi there @Jochem8, thanks for joining the Community and sorry to hear about this.

Can you please clarify if your account was an individual one or if you were part of a team perhaps?

If you could send us a screenshot of the exact error you got or provide more information, I'd appreciate it. 

Thanks!

[Jochem8]

Hi Walter. Thanks for your quick reply. I originally had an individual (free) account, then started working for my employer 2 years ago that also uses Dropbox. I stopped working there, so it's possible they have removed me from their Dropbox workspace. But I would assume this means I'm reverted back to my free account.

The error was something along the lines of "you are logged out of your Dropbox account". This was about 2-3 days ago.

[Rich · Accepted solution]

---

@Jochem8 wrote:

I stopped working there, so it's possible they have removed me from their Dropbox workspace. But I would assume this means I'm reverted back to my free account.

---

No, not at all.

Assuming you were in fact part of a Business team, when you joined that team, you merged your account into theirs, effectively making them the owner of your account. If they remove the account from the team, the account is deleted. In order to keep the account when you're removed from a team, the team admin needs to convert it back to an individual account.

If you were removed from the team and your account was deleted, you need to contact the team admin and ask them to first restore your account, and then convert it. Act quickly as they only have seven days to restore an account once it has been deleted. The team admin has to do this; Dropbox Support cannot.

One thing I'd do first, though, is change the email address on the new account that you just created (or delete the account), as two Dropbox accounts cannot use the same email address.

[Jochem8]

Thank you Rich. I have sent the admin an e-mail. Hopefully he reads it in time before I lose all my files. And I have changed the e-mail address associated with the Dropbox account.

[Jochem8]

Well, I have my files back. They were sent to me by the team admin. But they couldn't figure out how to get my account back. Because of many referrals, I had a lot of extra storage space available, but if I create a new account, I will be back at the basic 2GB again. Is that something Dropbox Support could help me with?