You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.

Forum Discussion

D_Mac's avatar
D_Mac
New member | Level 1
12 days ago

I accidentally joined a Dropbox team and I can't leave it now or delete my account.

Hi, 

I was just invited to join a dropbox team. The invite was sent to the email address that I use for my personal info, etc. I thought nothing of it as I just thought we'd have a shared folder or something, but it turned out it pulled all my stored dropbox info into this team. 

As a result, I quickly tried to delete all my personal files. It's moved them all into the trash, but it's saying I don't have permission to permanently delete them. 

It's also not allowing me to delete my personal account or leave the team. 

What are my options here, all I want to do is delete all my old info - but I don't seem to have that option with whatever I try to do?

  • Nancy's avatar
    Nancy
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Thanks for posting on our Community today, D_Mac.

    When joining a Dropbox team with an existing account, your personal files should have been moved into a folder with your Dropbox name.

    If these are indeed the files you're trying to delete, please keep in mind that the folder is personal to you and not accessible by anyone else on the team. 

    Now, if you want to recover any of your personal files, so that you can have them when you go back to a personal plan, please go ahead and restore them. As for permanently deleting them, this may have been disabled by the team admin.

    Speaking of, you’ll need to contact your team admin and have them remove you from the Dropbox team.

    Upon removing you from the team, they’ll need to make sure they’re converting your Dropbox account back to an individual one (with these steps), instead of deleting it altogether. If they do the latter, you won’t be able to access your account after that.

    Let me know if that helps or if you need something else.

  • D_Mac's avatar
    D_Mac
    New member | Level 1

    Ok great, thanks for that Nancy. That's a relief knowing that no one in the team can see my files. I was just a bit confused about what was happening. 

    I've moved all my stuff to the Deleted Files. I'm not sure if the team admin can see them in there or not? If I get the team admin to permanently delete the deleted files, would that get rid of all my files off dropbox permanently?

    • Nancy's avatar
      Nancy
      Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

      Glad to help, D_Mac. The admin shouldn’t be able to see your files in the Deleted files page either, unless they were located in a folder that had been shared with them or the team. 

      Other than that, if your files are permanently deleted, they will be completely and permanently removed from your Dropbox account and our servers indeed, and you won’t be able to restore them after that.

  • D_Mac's avatar
    D_Mac
    New member | Level 1

    Great, thanks heaps Nancy! 

    Sorry to bother you again,  I just wanted to double check something with you. 

    So if I was to ask a team admin to change the settings to allow files to be permanently deleted, I was just ask them to follow these steps:

    1. Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
    2. Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
    3. Click Settings.
    4. Under Content, click Deletion.
    5. Toggle Permanent delete to On.
    6. Click Save.

    And then once they've done that, I should be able to delete my personal files permanently? 

    But if that's not correct, please let me know. 

    Kind Regards, 

    Dave

About Security and Permissions

Start a discussion in the Dropbox Community forum to get help with your account security and permissions. Find support from Community members.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!