Why keeping an active email address can stop you getting locked out of Dropbox your account

[Graham]

*Note from Amy* 

Graham covers all of the most vital information here, but I just wanted to check in here as well, and ask if you have any experience with this issue? And to find out how best to share this info with new Dropbox Community members, to ensure that no one gets locked out of their account? Now, without further ado, on to Graham's wonderful piece.

When you first signed up to Dropbox, you would have been asked to enter an email address to create your account. Whether it’s Basic, Plus, Family or any Dropbox plan we have ever offered, an active email address has, and always will be, a non-negotiable condition of membership. Therefore, it is important to ensure you’re using an active email address with your Dropbox account. Explore how to change your email address if you need to, and what to do if you’ve already lost access to your associated email address.

Why is an email address important?

There are a number of reasons why you need an active email address, most of them revolving around keeping your Dropbox account, and all of the files and folders you keep in it, safe. You can use it to sign in, to receive verification codes, and for changing your password, so it’s a pretty important element of your Dropbox account. That being said, it’s a very good idea to make sure you keep this email account active as long as you plan on using Dropbox. 

Look, we’ve all had an email account at some stage in our life that we no longer have access to. To be honest, for most of us, it’s probably more than one. Changing jobs, graduating from a school or university, or just changing email service provider, realising that your first email address (hotdude1999@hotmail.co.uk) isn’t really appropriate any more, there are any number of reasons why you might no longer have access to an email address, so it‘s important to be careful with the one you have associated with your Dropbox account, or you could risk losing access to you account and everything you have stored in it.

To make sure this doesn’t happen, here are a few things you can do to make sure you’re never locked out in the cold when trying to sign in to your Dropbox account.

How to change your Dropbox email address

When it comes to making sure you don’t lose access to your email address, prevention is definitely the best course of defence. If the email address you used is one that is connected to a job or any form of institution and it is likely that you might lose it at some point in the future, you can simply change your email address to your personal email or one that you will always have access to. It’s a pretty easy process and you can do it by following these simple steps.

1. Sign in to dropbox.com.
2. Click your avatar (profile picture or initials) in the upper-right corner.
3. Click Settings.
4. Under the General tab, find your email address.
5. Click Edit next to your email address.
• If you see Verify email instead of Edit, you’ll need to verify your email address before you can change it.
• If you see an info icon (i inside a circle) instead of Edit, you’ll need to contact your admin to change your email address.
6. Enter your new e-mail, confirm e-mail, and Dropbox password.
7. Click Update email. We’ll send a verification email to your new email address.
8. Open the email, and click Verify your email.

You can read more about changing the email address on your Dropbox account here .

Stay logged in 

Depending on what Dropbox plan you are on, you are allowed to sign in to your account on a minimum of 3 different devices. You can choose from a phone, tablet, laptop, desktop or anything else that works for you. 

If you have a device that only you has access to and you’re happy enough to keep yourself signed in to Dropbox it’s probably a good idea to stay logged in. The reason for this is, even if you lose access to the email address associated with your account, once you’re logged in on another device, you will still be able access your settings and do things like change the associated email address or reset your password.

If you’ve already lost access to your associated email address

If you’ve already lost access to your account, there are still a few things you can try to get back into your account.

If you still know the email address and your password, you can try login as normal. If you’ve been using your account regularly and you’re on a device that we recognize, this might work for you and if so you will be able to access your account settings to update your email address.

If this does not work for you and you are asked to enter a code that was sent to your associated email address, the only way you will be able to get back into your Dropbox account is by entering this code. In this case, if your email account was with a former employer or school, you should contact them to see if they can reactivate your email address, otherwise you can contact your email service provider and try to regain access that way.

We’re all about keeping accounts as safe as they can be, whether it’s using two-step verification or a password manager, if it helps keep things safe, we love it! We’d love to hear about the extra steps you take to help keep your account safe at all times. Let us know in the comments below.