Recover lost account of same email

[DavF]

Old Account linked to Gmail won't accept password. Signed in with Google linked Gmail and it is totally new account. How do I recover old account?

[Walter]

HI there @DavF - thanks for posting on our Community and happy Friday!

It sounds like you created a new Dropbox account, but this would be impossible if you already had a Dropbox account associated with the email address you used.

How long has it been since you last logged into the account in question?

Do you happen to have more than one email address? 

Any additional information is more than welcome! 

[DavF]

It's been years since accessing the account. It was full, but had important pictures. I do have another email account. Maybe a backup email?

[DavF]

The other email is a comcast.net account

[Hannah · Accepted solution]

Hey @DavF, sorry to jump in here.

I'm afraid that if it was more than 12 months since you last logged in to the account, it would have been disabled due to inactivity.

That's why it allowed you to create a new account under the same email address.

In this case, I'm afraid there's not much that can be done.

You can contact our support team about this, if you want.

To do so, open a private browsing/incognito window and go to this page, to choose your issue type and fill out the form to submit your help request.

[DavF]

Said it solved, not really! All files I've had for years and important family photos are unilaterally deleted. Because Dropbox decided. In my experience with other platforms, this is unprecedented. No more Dropbox ever ! Too many nice competitors.

[Hannah]

I understand where you're coming from, @DavF, it's really frustrating to lose precious memories.

Of course, you would have received an email about this, notifying you, before the deletion of the account.

And again, if you want, you can reach out to our support team, so they can confirm things on their end as well, since for security reasons, we can't access account-specific info on the Community.

In any case, your feedback is taken into account and your comments are passed along to our team.

If you need anything else, please let us know.

[kquirk]

I've apparently created two accounts under different emails -- work and personal. The account that has all my stuff for the past 7 or 8 years is apparently the work one and I can't access it. Everything has disappeared except two items in the personal account. How do I get back into the account linked to my work email. I tried linking through Google, but it says I already have an account under that name.

[Rich]

---

@kquirk wrote:

I tried linking through Google, but it says I already have an account under that name.

---

That's the message you get while trying to CREATE an account when one already exists with that email address. Try to sign in instead. If you go to the Dropbox website and keep getting your personal account, open a private/Incognito browser window so you're not signed in, then try signing in with the work account.