My files have gone missing unexpectedly

[Smilence]

After 13 years of using dropbox, I've discovered that some of the important files in one folder just gone missing. The folder seems to be empty, despite that I know for sure there are gigabytes of data there. 

I did not manually delete anything, nothing can be found in the folder history, no deletion history anywhere. In fact, I have not deleted anything from my dropbox in the last 5 years. 

The files were there about a few months ago, now the entire folder just disappeared. 

Because I'm a Basic/free user, I can't even get to the support team. This is ridiculous. How could Dropbox just corrupt the data of a user? How could Dropbox just delete files without user consent? 

Anyone could help me out here? 

[Hannah]

Hi there, @Smilence, and sorry to hear about this.

Dropbox wouldn't really delete your files; did you check your emails to see if you received any emails about file deletions in your account?

Also, were those files shared with someone else, or simple, non-shared files?

I'd suggest checking your deleted files, your events and your shared page, in the case that the files were shared.

Let me know what you find.

[Smilence]

Checked and no emails regarding any file deletion;

Those files were simple, non-shared files;

Delete files showing empty;

Events tracking back to a few years showing no deletion events;

Shared folders are not showing those files as they weren't shared. 

This is just super, super weird. Please help. Thank you. 

[Hannah]

Thanks for the update, @Smilence.

It is weird indeed. Perhaps it's a browser issue; can you login to your account from a different browser and let me know if you see the same thing?

Or is it possible you're looking in the wrong account?

[Smilence]

I've tried to log in using a different browser, and then using the app on my mobile phone, both showing the same result. I even tried to download the desktop application, but still no luck. 

The account is the correct one, I only have one Dropbox account. 

One thing worth nothing is that my Dropbox has been nearly full(less than 1GB of space left) for the last 5 years. However, I don't feel like this is the root cause. 

[Hannah]

It is pretty strange, indeed.

If you want, we can switch to email, so I can take a look into your account and see what I can find.

[Smilence]

Hi Hannah, 

That would be wonderful and appreciate it. 

Could you please contact me via email, and I'll provide anything you need to identify a solution.

Thanks 

[Hannah]

Thanks, @Smilence!

I just emailed you, so we'll continue investigating there.

[Creativenap]

Hi @Smilence! I saw your post on a Reddit thread, too. Have you been able to recover your data? 

I've just had something similar happened to me last week, shortly after I installed the Dropbox app to my new-ish MacbooPro OS 14 Sonoma. I have tons of files and folders missing, including my recent rebrand assets in Adobe Illustrator (the raw/editable AI files)! 

7 days and 9 support agent later, I still don't have my data recovered. How is this acceptable?! I would love to learn about the outcome of your situation and I'm hoping it's positive one so I can at least have some hope. 

Thanks!

Nicole

[Creativenap]

Hi @hahaha, were you or someone from Dropbox able to help @Smilence recover his files?