I tried to sign in to my old account, but created a new one instead. How to access the old one?

[Gibber]

Hope this is the place to ask this question.  I was trying to log in, and it forced me to create a new account.  Of course none of my stuff is there.  How do I contact Dropbox to get back to my 'old account'?

[Mark]

How long ago did you last log on to your old account @Gibber ?

[Gibber]

I haven't actually gone through the logon process for awhile.  I just updated to Windows  11 the other day.  Before that I was regularly accessing the files 'through the computer.'   (Dropbox was setup to access like a regular file system.)  Also, I found a link in my mail from 2018 where I had shared files from Dropbox with someone.  That link still works. So the files are still 'out there'.

[Hannah]

Hey @Gibber, let's see what we can find.

If you were prompted to create a new account, that means that the old one is disabled and cannot be recovered. This happens after 12 months of not accessing the account.

However, if the link is still active (note: I removed it from your post, to avoid unnecessary traffic in your account), it means that the account the link was created from, is still active.

Which leads me to believe that you've signed in using a different email address; could that be the case?

[Gibber]

How would I find out what other email address I might have used?  I looked through help, but it always says log into your account to see what email is used.

[Rich]

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@Gibber wrote:

How would I find out what other email address I might have used?

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You would need to know the address you used. Otherwise the only way to look up an account is if it's a paid account and you use the credit card charge lookup tool.

Go through your email accounts and looks for messages from Dropbox. The email account you used will have received a message from Dropbox when you created the account.