Is there a Dropbox "Master Account" that can't be changed?

[Techfixes]

A long-term staff member recently stepped down from an organization we support and was the main Dropbox Admin.

I received advice to the effect that we could not remove this person’s account as “it’s the account that syncs the Dropbox repository.”

Therefore,  I'm told the account (apparently) needs to be kept active indefinitely, including a licensed M365 account for the SSO.

Can you think of any reason why this would be necessary? (possibly a historical reason due to past changes by Dropbox themselves?)

If the account/s do need to be maintained, is there a workaround such as renaming the account, for example?

It just seems to me like a fundamentally untenable situation. Obviously we don’t want to risk altering the structure of the Dropbox folders or losing data, but I’m certain there would have to be a way forward from this kind of problem (if it exists at all).

I would be grateful for some insights from those in the know. Dropbox Reps please feel free to chip in 🙂

Plan is Dropbox Advanced Server Integration

[Hannah]

Hey @Techfixes, thanks for posting to our Community.

If you don't mind, can you clarify what you mean by "it’s the account that syncs the Dropbox repository"?

To provide some info, though, if this person is an admin on the team, this is something that can be changed at any time.

They, or someone with access to their account, will just need to make someone else an admin on the team and then that new admin can revoke admin privileges from the first one.

Of course, the name of the account and the email address associated with it can also be changed, if that's what you'd prefer to do.

Let me know if you have any questions.

[Techfixes]

The thing is, I don't know. I've been given this report which said we can't change it because "it’s the account that syncs the Dropbox repository".

I've honestly never heard of such a thing and didn't think Dropbox worked that way.

I mean, would removing the main Admin account adversely affect the files, folders or the access to the files in any way? Would it cause some change to the structure of the files as the user's see them?

What possible drawbacks could there be to simply reasigning the Admin and removing the old Admin?

I can't think of any, but want to be absolutely sure there isn't some historical or other reason why the Dropbox would be affected adversely.

[Hannah]

As long as the files remain in the team and they're not deleted, there's really no drawbacks in changing the admin of the team.

The new admin will be able to gain access (if they don't already have it) to all files through the admin console anyway.

But if changing admin roles sounds too extreme, you can always change the admin's name and email and give the account to someone that will be appointed as the new admin.

[Rich]

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@Techfixes wrote:
I received advice to the effect that we could not remove this person’s account as “it’s the account that syncs the Dropbox repository.”

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The only way that I can think of that being an issue is if they were using that account to sync a full copy of your Dropbox data to a specific computer, and then other people were accessing those files directly across your local network, rather than through Dropbox on their own computer. That's not how Dropbox is meant to work (and is unsupported in that way), but some have done it like that in the past.

If everyone is accessing the files in Dropbox on their own computer or through the website, then there's likely nothing preventing you from removing that person's account.