I'm missing files from my over-quota Dropbox account after moving to a new device.

[Bryan28]

My old (12 years) pc died with a failed graphics card, I had had old messages that my free dropbox was full by email. I do not remember any password being asked for at the time. I now have a new pc (windows11) and the hard drive data has been transferred, but only stuff from earlier than around 2011. I cannot find any of the full dropbox docs and nothing from 2022 on. Where is it and how do I find it?

[Nancy]

Hey @Bryan28, welcome to our forum. 

When did your Dropbox account become full exactly? Did you keep adding files to your desktop app after that point? If yes, then they wouldn't have synced to your Dropbox account online.

Also, how exactly did you transfer your Dropbox files over to the new device? Did you install the Dropbox app again and only files before 2011 synced locally?

Are you missing files on www.dropbox.com? 

Let me know.

[Bryan28]

Nancy

Thanks for your reply. I do not know exactly when the dropbox became full but I had been accessing files from 2022 onwards days before the graphics card failed and had created powerpoint presentations within the last month. All these were on the old pc but not on transferred data. The dropbox would have been with this email address and was probably started around February 2022, a date when nothing further seems to have ben saved. The 'helpful' person who transferred the data added a team dropbox account for the free trial. But there is nothing there apart from Professor Dr Lake account. There is no recent data there. Does dropbox delete files when full and if so where are the recent ones not saved which were on the pc the day before the failure. I need the old dropbox files for some consultancy work. Please help.

[Mark]

Hi @Bryan28 

Once Dropbox is full it stops syncing, so, nothing else will have been added to Dropbox online - that includes updates to files or new ones. You can see any changes at www.dropbox.com/events. If you work on Dropbox locally they will save on the hard drive in the Dropbox folder but crucially not save to Dropbox - because, as the error is telling you, it is full. 

There is no way, at all, to get that data back from Dropbox. Thats because it didn't upload to Dropbox (as it was over quota). Dropbox doesn't even know it existed. Its not done anything with it. 

Sorry.

[Bryan28]

So the answer is that any files in the full drop box can be retrieved. Also any files on the pc in the local dropbox folder should still be on the pc and be retrievable but not saved. When I can access the hard drive again ( my 'helper' cannot find any of the files after 2020) I will check it out. I hope I have understood the situation.