Is there any way to prevent our colleagues from deleting team files?

[ManypplUse]

There are multiple people that use our company's dropbox account.  Ocassionaly a folder and all of it's contents accidentally get moved and slows our computers down extremley bad until the sync is complete and then it does it all over agin when the file is moved back to where it needs to be.  PLEASE HELP!  Is there a way that a permission can be set to prevent unauthorized moving or deletion of files?

Thanks!

[Rich · Accepted solution]

---

@ManypplUse wrote:

There are multiple people that use our company's dropbox account.

---

Is this a single account being used on all their computers, a Dropbox Business account with separate licenses for each user, or separate Personal accounts for each person with each having access to a shared folder?

If it's a single account being used for everyone, then no, there's no way for Dropbox to prevent them from moving or deleting files.

If you're using a Dropbox Business account or if each user has their own account and you're using a shared folder, then you can assign view-only permissions to a shared folder. That would prevent moves and deletions, but it would also prevent editing, uploading and other changes.

The better solution is to train your people. This is a problem that exists not only in Dropbox, but any shared environment. I have users contacting me often about missing files or folders, and it's nearly always caused by an accidental drag and drop by someone else. I find that a few minutes of training with those users greatly reduces the number of instances.

[fabioborgespereira]

Recently one "family member" deleted files in "Family Room" folder from her laptop. She was not the adm / manager, but ALL of those files were deleted from the cloud and everywhere! There should be a way of the manager setting specific rights for each of the family mmembers. For instance: let them upload files to family folder, but NOT deleting them. Only the manager should be able to delete files, in my case here. This would be VERY important.

[Siaska]

We are a small non-profit with staff in 16 countries. We experience accidental mass deletions (> 40GB). How can I limit a team member's permissions so that they cannot accidentally delete a large amount of files? We use the restore and rewind functions but we do not have downtime in Dropbox since we are working in all time zones. We have been using Dropbox as our main storage for over 10 years and the one issue I always have is that it is too easy to accidentally do a mass deletion (by pulling a folder to your desktop, leaving your laptop unattended and a kid gets to it, etc.) We try to educate our team but are fully virtual and culturally extremely diverse. The only way I see right now is to remove staff as team members and give them permission to certain folders only but we moved away from that because it's hard to manage. Dropbox tells me there is nothing I can do. Really?

[Hannah]

Hey @Siaska, thanks for posting to the Dropbox Community.

At the moment, when it comes to Dropbox Business teams, there is a setting that helps prevent members from permanently deleting files and folders.

For simple deletions, there's no setting you can choose, if the members need to have edit access to the folders.

Otherwise, you can change the sharing permissions to give them view-only access.

I hope this helps, but let me know if you have any questions.

[Siaska]

Hello Hannah,

I am not able to give some team members viewing access only to a folder. I foolowed your intructions. If there is a way to allow some team members to edit and others to view only a certain folder, can you please explain the steps because I did not manage.

Thanks,

Siaska

[Nancy]

Hey Siaska! Hope you’re good. 

Have you tried these steps perhaps to manage the sharing permissions of your team members? 

Let me know if they seem to work, or if you’re still having trouble with this.

[Who knows]

Hello Dropbox Team. There is no easy way to say this - You NEED to have a setting immediately which PREVENTS DELETION BY OTHER TEAM MEMBERS. If a company is using dropbox and all the company files are there, can i ask why there is no setting to prevent staff members from editing, deleting, downloading? There is a company known as ShareFile which has user controls preventing this sort of thing - IF THE ADMIN WISHES TO SET IT. Please do this as a matter of urgency - EVERYONE WANTS IT

[Siaska]

Very happy to see this post. This is still one of the major setbacks for our company as well.