Erroneous "full" message

[John McCormick]

I'm getting "Dropbox full" message in our account when we're only using about 1 GB of our 2.75 GB space allocation.  I'm not using backups and synchronisation is working for some people in our account but not others.  What should I do?

[Mark]

Hi @John McCormick 

What exactly do you mean 'its working for some in our account and not others' ?

Are you using 1 log on between multiple people or different ones?

What does www.dropbox.com/account/plan show?

[John McCormick]

Hi, we have multiple logins in our account

[Rich]

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@John McCormick wrote:

... we're only using about 1 GB of our 2.75 GB space allocation.

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we have multiple logins in our account

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Based on the amount of space you have in your account (2.75GB) you have a Basic account. Basic accounts only have one user; they don't support multiple logins. The only accounts that have multiple logins are Business Team accounts.

Can you describe how you have this set up? Are you possibly referring to shared folders, with each person having their own, separate Dropbox account?

[Mark]

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@John McCormick wrote:
Hi, we have multiple logins in our account

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As @Rich said that isnt quite how Dropbox works.

I suspect that you have all got multiple accounts and are using shared folders. These, however, use up the quota of everybody in them. So, if you all have different quotas, different shares or even their own files/folders in the account as well as the shares this would be why some are full and others arent. 

[John McCormick]

Hi, thanks for info. I didn’t set it up, but we just need one account that enables multiple users to exchange files. We don’t pay anything for it, I suspect that you’re right that it’s just a basic account. How would I find out what sort of account that we have?

[Mark]

You can see what plan you are on at www.dropbox.com/account/plan. 

What I would say as well is make sure that you are all using different accounts - it is against the TOS to use one account for multiple people and Dropbox do, and have, banned accounts for that (including deleting all data) without warning. 

If you are a business I'd also STRONGLY suggest your employer IT team risk assess how they use Dropbox and how its deployed around data safety etc. and accessing accounts of people.... as without it being a Business plan they have no way of gaining access should they need it OR should an employee delete things as sabotage etc. they cannot get access. 

[John McCormick]

Hi, this is very useful and apologies for clearly not understanding everything.  My understanding is that we have the Basic plan, and all we want to do is to share files between three people in our volunteer organisation who are at different locations using the cloud as a central switching point. So, can you make it a bit clearer for me what an account is as opposed to a plan.  When I logon to Dropbox with my email address and password is that an account? If so, we have 3 separate accounts, which you said was a good thing, so three logons (accounts?) into one plan?  Do I understand that right?

[Mark]

Hi @John McCormick 

Yes thats spot on 🙂

Three accounts = three log ons. 

Plan = what you pay for within that account. So, basically, it is your quota/free space. It is possible for people to have different quotas depending upon their plan status (i.e. paid or free) as well as referrals etc. 

[John McCormick]

Right, I think we're getting there.  So if we have three accounts in our plan, and our plan has a total of 2.75 GB storage space and we're using 562.4 MB of this , does that mean that each of the three accounts only has 1/3 of the storage in the Dropbox folder on their machine?  Or that we have the 2.75 GB limit in our shared folder space in the cloud?  I'd assumed the latter.  If that's correct I don't understand why I can synchronise OK but my colleague can't from her machine.  Would it make any difference if she had other files or folders in her Dropbox folder on her machine?  Would that count against our limit?  But if that was the case, wouldn't those files on her machine show up in the shared folders that I can see? My next step anyway is to go to her house and have a look at her laptop setup and see if I can figure out if there's anything weird happening.  Does that sound like a reasonable next step to you?