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How to free up space in your Dropbox account
I've unshared many folders, permanently deleted lots of files but dropbox still reports that it is full. How can I free up space? I've already followed dropbox instructions with no results
Permanently deleting files isn't needed to clear space. Simply deleting them is enough. Files in the Deleted Files section do not count against your storage quota.
If Dropbox is saying your account is full, then it's still full. You need to remove enough files to bring your account back below your quota before that message will go away. It could be that you're still a member of a large share that just keeps filling your account as you make more room.
You can verify your storage usage on your Account page. It will show you a breakdown of what's using your storage (regular files, shared files, etc.), which hat may help you identify files that you can remove to free up some more space.
Android users have a big advantage in clearing up space in their Dropbox because they get the best possible tool to do that. Unclouded is simply brilliant and does things that no other app does.
To begin, sign in only with your Dropbox account and not any other cloud account, even though you have options for those. At this point, you only want to analyze your Dropbox account, nothing else.
By default, you get an overview of your files and folders. Go to Menu > Categories to see what types of files dominate the things stored on your Dropbox. A quick look showed me that I had stored several comics on Dropbox, and was able to remove them. Similarly, you might be able to remove videos or images, or MP3s in one swoop.
Next, go to Menu > Duplicates, where Unclouded will show you several files that appear twice. Long-press a duplicated file, tap the three-dot icon in the top right and choose Select All. Now, just start tapping one copy of each file so it's unselected. When you're done, delete the rest by tapping the Trash icon. To me, it was surprising how many of my files repeated, and I ended up clearing up a lot of space through this step. If you've installed Dropbox on Windows, there are tools to find and delete duplicates.
Then, go to Menu > All Files, and tap the second icon from the top right, which looks like three lines of different lengths. Tap Large to Small to sort all files (including those within folders) from largest to smallest. Now select the files you want to delete and get rid of them. Remember, you got rid of duplicates, so this is the last copy of this file on your Dropbox!
Finally, sign in to Unclouded with your other cloud storage like Google Drive, OneDrive, etc. Now, run through Menu > Duplicates again to see which files on Dropbox also appear in your other cloud drives. That way, you can get rid of the file on Dropbox, whereas it can stay somewhere else where you have more space.
Unclouded is so powerful that if non-Android users want to manage Dropbox space, you should emulate this Android app on your PC or run this Android app in Chrome on any operating system.
Download: Unclouded for Android (Free)
