Everything deleted in account - acted like my account had never been in use

[kristinz84]

I tried logging into my account which I have logged into several times this year but it made me create a new account with the same email address. Needless to say, everything is gone and I am panicking. 

[Walter]

Hey @kristinz84 - sorry to hear about this.

You can confirm that you're looking at a newly created account by taking a look at your events page. Do you see any signs of your files there? 

Have you ensured that you used the exact email address you were using before? 

Do you happen to have another Dropbox account, associated with a different email address of yours?

Let us know more and we'll take it from there. 

[kristinz84]

Hi Walter. There are no events before today. Yes, I am sure it was the same email address as it was saved in my PW manager. My colleague was able to share some of the previous files again with me. The email address in question is [email removed as per Community Guidelines] was part of a team then removed but that shouldn't have affected my [email removed as per Community Guidelines] account, correct?

[Megan]

Hi @kristinz84, it sounds like you might have two Dropbox accounts.

Can you just make sure that the files are in the correct account? Do you have access to the other one, in order to check for the files there? 

Also, the fact that there are no events, is a strong sign of a newly-created account. 

[Rich · Accepted solution]

I can't see the email address(es) that were edited out above. Assuming you were using the same email address for the team account, read on.

@kristinz84 wrote:

The email address in question ... was part of a team then removed but that shouldn't have affected my ... account, correct?

---

Yes, it would.

When you join a Business team you merge your account into the team, effectively making them the owner of your account. If you're later removed from the team your account is deleted. If the intent is to return the account back to the original owner, instead of removing you from the team the team admin needs to convert it back to an individual account.

If it's been less than seven days since you were removed from the team, the team admin can restore the account and then convert it back to an individual account, though I suspect that won't be possible since you were able to create a new account with the same email address (indicating that your former account no longer exists).

Check with the team admin to see if they can still restore your account. If not, they may have transferred the files that were in it to another team member.

[kristinz84]

WOW! That is crazy! All has been restored. Thanks so much for the help!