Business and personal account -- cannot unlink personal and link to new personal

[beandolph6]

I currently have two accounts, business and personal.

My husband has his own account.

With the upgrade to 2TB, we no longer need to have 2 accounts.

I unlinked my personal account on my work laptop. It still has my business account.

I cannot figure out how to link to my husband's account (our new shared account). Dropbox defaults to my old personal account login and will not let me edit it. If I try to use the "Google" signin, it chastizes me that I need to use my old personal login. 

I have gone to the Dropbox website and unlinked the devices (my work laptop) as well. Doesn't matter.

Do I need to unlink my business account as well to give me a chance to link to my husband's personal account (aka, our new shared account)?

Thanks for any guidance on this. 

[Jane]

Hey @beandolph6, I have to admit I’m not sure if you have two or three accounts at the moment, so if you could clarify this detail for me, that would be very helpful. 

If I follow-up on your description correctly, it seems that you’re currently working on three accounts & you’d like to switch to two, meaning that you & your husband will use one account each. Hopefully you’re not sharing account credentials, are you by any chance?

To answer your inquiry, kindly bear in mind that you can easily link your husband’s account on your desktop by unlinking your first account first. (Note: This action will leave all the files from your first account intact there). You may reference the following steps to get going with that: 

Spoiler

Click the Dropbox icon in the system tray. :right_arrow: Click the  icon and select Preferences… from the menu. :right_arrow: Select the 👤 Account tab. & Click Unlink This Dropbox... and confirm your choice.

When you unlink your computer, Dropbox will prompt you to sign in again.

Once unlinked, all the files you’ve synced on this device from your account will still be available. In case your husband doen’t intend to keep a copy of the files stored in your own account, then they could move this folder to the Trash :wastebasket:️ after they unlink.

From there, when your husband links the second account, it’ll start syncing to your desktop from scratch. 

I hope that this answers your initial question & I’m always here in case you have any more queries- please let me know how my advice works for you & I’ll follow-up asap. Thanks for reaching out on our Community & have a lovely day ahead until we talk again! 

[beandolp6]

Thank you for the quick response.  What you propose is exactly what I have unsuccessfully tried, and led to my posting here.

There are three accounts currently. My personal account.  My husband's personal account. My work account.

My laptop has Dropbox installed. The business account is available. My personal account is available.

I unlinked my personal account. Now only my business account is available.

Now I'm interested in having two accounts on my laptop.  My business account and husband's personal account. ("My husband's personal account" will become our shared account, now that Dropbox shifted to a 2TB offering. We can fit all our files in one account, and stop paying for two.)

On Dropbox on my laptop I tell it I want to add a personal account. The splash screen that comes up ONLY allows me to log back into my personal account. My account email is pre-filled and greyed out -- I cannot change it. My only other option is to log in with Google. If I do that and use my husband's credentials, when we return to the splash screen it chastizes me that I cannot login with that credential. I must use my existing account credential.

Put simply, I'm trying to break up with Dropbox and it won't let me move on.

Rebooting the computer does not help. 

I am loathe to delete the entire Dropbox app from my laptop, in the hopes that it would then allow me to connect to a new personal account. This would be very disruptive to my work and risky (in my mind) given how many other people depend upon the business Dropbox account. (In theory I know nothing would be effected on others' accounts. But still.)

[beandolp6]

affected, that is....

[Jane]

Thanks for clarifying matters for me @beandolph6 (is it the same as @beandolp6?); this has been very helpful, as can now take it exactly from where you’ve left off on your end!

Now, what you’re seeing is expected, as you’ve linked your Dropbox accounts (i.e. the Business & the personal one) & that’s why you’re only allowed to sign in with either of those two on your desktop. 

Depending on your needs, I’d say that you currently have two options to work on both accounts (meaning yours & your husband’s) on the same device, let me explain those below & you can choose the option that best suits your needs: 

Spoiler

#1. You could create a new User Profile where you can install the desktop app anew & let your husband sign in to the Dropbox account he’s using on the Dropbox folder created there. Kindly note that the two Dropbox folders will work separately with this configuration & that’s what I’d recommend if I had the same configuration. 

#2. Following from your description, please bear in mind that Dropbox lets you use two Dropbox accounts simultaneously as long as you’re the account holder of both. For security reasons, you should first unlink from both the personal & the Business account you’ve connected on your desktop, so that your husband links their account. While not ideal, kindly note that should you decide to continue with this configuration, there will be three separate Dropbox folders on your device, which you can use interchangeably. 

Hopefully this points you towards the best next steps & please feel free to ping me here if you have more questions or thoughts. Thanks again for staying in touch!

[beandolph6 · Accepted solution]

Thank you. It's now clear that the business and personal accounts are deeply linked, and that changing to a different personal account on my work laptop (where the business account already exists) will take much more than just unlinking on the laptop.

My workaround will be to downgrade to an unpaid account (so that I can keep my current account on my work laptop), put what personal files I most frequently want access to at work in there, and go to dropbox.com when needed to access other files that will be in my husband's account.

[Jane]

🙌🏼 Glad to hear that you’ve managed to get going on this matter with the workaround you posted us above @beandolph6 @beandolp6 & I appreciate it that you circled back to keep the thread updated on your decision! For that reason, I've now accepted your last post as the Best Answer, since it may useful to anyone else re-visiting in the future. 🤓

Please feel free to ping us back here in case you have any more Dropbox-specific inquiries; our Community Wall is always open to your feedback or questions & we’d happily work again with you in the future. Happy Dropboxing & have a wonderful weekend ahead!

This thread is closed due to inactivity. Please feel free to create a new topic here. 

[melissa10]

How do I unlink a personal and business account? I tried to not do this but incorrectly selected the wrong choice and now they are linked with a client account. I do not see unlink available in my settings. Please help - this just happened and now I am worried.

Thank you

[Megan]

Hi @melissa10, I hope you're doing well!

From what I understand, you joined a Business team with your personal account, and now you want to get out of it, right? 

You'd need to ask the Team's admin to remove you from the team, and convert your account back into an individual one. Here is how they can do this.

If you have any questions, I am here!