Sharing folders without space

[Jim A.1]

I want to accept an invitation to share a folder but dropbox won't let me without buying more space.
what's the deal here? If the owner has the space why can't I accept the invitation, look at it and also send a file to it?

[Bishop]

So I'm pretty new to Dropbox. My family went on vacation and I would like to get everyone's photos in one place. I had everyone get the Dropbox app and shared a folder to them. Then as space started filling up I purchased the Dropbox plus for extra space however I still have people unable to upload because of storage being full. I checked mine and it says 0.2% full of my 1 tb limit. Am I missing something? I assumed space was determined against the owner of a shared folders limits. Please help

[Jane]

Hey Bishop, 

Welcome to the Dropbox Community, glad to help you clarify! 

Please keep in mind that, when it comes to personal accounts, the Dropbox storage quota is calculated by adding up the total amount of data in your Dropbox folder, including all shared folders and files collected from file requests. 

Because an upgrade to one account cannot be transferred, in order to avoid affecting other users' quota, you could send them a link to the uploads folder to grant them access to the files inside. 

Hope this is helpful! If you need further assistance, just let me know in your reply. 

Warm regards, 

JaneA

[Bishop]

Thank you for the speedy reply.
I'm not sure I understand though. If it's calculated by the total amount of data in my Dropbox folder, since I'm a Dropbox plus member, I should have 1 tb. There is only 1 folder in my Dropbox and it's a shared folder with about 200 photos that I shared with about 15 people to load their pictures into. A friend is trying to add more pictures to my shared folder and it tells him I need to upgrade my account. I would like to have everyone able to have access to this folder so they could see eachothers pictures that have been uploaded.

[Rich]

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Bishop wrote:
I assumed space was determined against the owner of a shared folders limits.

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That's an incorrect assumption. For personal accounts, that is to say, non-Business accounts, data in a shared folder is counted against any member of that shared folder. If you have a 1TB account and invite someone with a 2GB account to join a shared folder, they would only be able to have 2GB of data in the shared folder before their account reported as full and stopped syncing.

Simply put, the files exist in everyone's account, not just yours, so they need to have an account large enough to hold all of the files.

• https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/storage-space

[Smithkids]

I received an email that informed me that someone I know shared a file with me that contained pictures. I clicked on the link in the email to look at the file, but received a message that said I did not have enough space in my dropbox. Am I forced to upgrade my dropbox to view a folder on someone else's dropbox? Similarly, if I share a folder with someone, must they download dropbox to view it? If the folder I am sharing is bigger than the 2 GB that comes with the free version, is that person I tried to share the folder with required to subscribe to dropbox?

[Mark · Accepted solution]

If you have read/write access to a folder then it is also part of your Dropbox and so uses your quota. So yes, regardless of how big the other persons quota is if its a read/write folder you will need to upgrade to view it if you do not have enough space in your account.

If you just need read only access they can use shared links via https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/view-only-access which will not use your quota.

[This thread is now closed by moderators due to inactivity. If you're experiencing a similar behavior, feel free to start a new discussion in the Dropbox Community here.]