Why is my account out of space?

[adrian29630]

As seems to be the case these days with many "Apps" they want you to buy their product but don't deliver support and want to rely on "Communities". In other words free assistance from other users which costs them nothing but for me at least puts me off ever paying for any of their products!

Now the reason I wanted support.  I was asked to "share" on a Dropbox account. Not my account but someone who asked me to assist in uploading a large quantity of documents in a short space of time.  As far as I am concerned this had and should not have had any involvement with my Dropbox account.  I did not add anything to my account, all the uploads went direct to the Dropbox shared folders.

Now, I constantly receive notifications that my Dropbox is full and that I am Using 34.38 GB of 2 GB space.  How ridiculous is that!!!!! They are trying to sell me more storage when I do not need storage and none of the uploaded files should be in my Dropbox.

I want this resolved. I want my Dropbox cleared of files that should not have ever been added to them.

That's why a support access should be provided to enable faults to be rectified. Some hopes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Harry Molyneux]

If that's the case why does every member with access to that folder need to pay for it's storage separately? Surely there should be an owner or owner organization responsible for the billing of that folder.

It doesn't work like that on other services and seems like profiteering. 

[Rich]

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@Harry Molyneux wrote:

If that's the case why does every member with access to that folder need to pay for it's storage separately?

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Because every member has their own COPY of the folder in their own account which syncs back to all the other members, and anything in your account takes up space. You're not accessing a folder in someone else's account.

• https://help.dropbox.com/storage-space/storage-space

[Harry Molyneux]

It’s not really their own unique copy, it’s the exact same folder.

It doesn’t have to work that way, it’s just set up like that by Dropbox so they can charge users more. It’s pretty obvious. Google Drive doesn’t work that way and the functionality is the exact same.

[Rich]

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@Harry Molyneux wrote:
It’s not really their own unique copy, it’s the exact same folder.

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No, it's a unique copy for each user. You can even rename and move the shared folder elsewhere in your account, and it won't affect the other members while still syncing with their copies of the folder.

Sure, there's Dropbox's deduplication magic happening in the background so each unique file chunk (remember, files are stored in chunks, not complete files) is not duplicated on the back-end servers, but each user does have their own unique copy of the files in their account. If I make a change in a folder that is shared with me, that change is not seen instantly for all other members, which it would if I was editing the same copy as theirs. That edited file is synced to all of the other members of the share.

[Harry Molyneux]

What benefit is there to having it sync not in real time? And the ability rename a folder doesn’t justify having to pay for the pricing. You could just create a shortcut to it and rename is whatever you like in another app like Google Drive.

Why are you defending this so adamantly? Do you work for Drop Box?

[adrian29630]

That is my opinion on this as well.  It seems to me that if Person A has an account with a folder in it and wants to share access or content of that folder with Person B there is no real reason why Person B should need to have or acquire limits equal to Person A.

In my case, Person A asked me to help to upload documents to his folder because there were a substantial number and he did not have time to do all of them.  I did not need to view these, read them, or interact with them just upload them to a folder in Person A's Dropbox account.

As far as I was concerned I was not sharing the documents just having a shared access to the folder where the documents were required to be stored.

As others have stated it seems to me this idea of sharing resulting in the content being held in both "shared" accounts and therefore requiring both account holders to have the same level of storage is nothing more than a con.

[ScreamUser1]

IF you both have ownership of the folder, then any files you delete will be deleted for both of you. So don't delete anything.

No one has explicitly said this. 

You must go into the folder in question and say, "I'm out. Bye, Felicia!" 

How you do that is not straightforward (IMO).

To remove yourself from the shared folder.

1. Highlight the folder you want to be removed from.
2. "Sharing" and "Details" appear to the right of my folders. Choose "Sharing"
3. Scroll down to your name & click on the " . . ." that follows your name.
4. Select "Remove"

(Most of the other answers were speaking shorthand to other people who know the lingo, not to someone who is at their wit's end with the peculiarities of DropBox - All of these platforms have their own weirdness; if you invite someone to a folder in BOX you have to have a license for them and room.  So I am not being too critical of DropBox).

[ScreamUser1]

Sorry, Rich. That has to be new.  The number of times I've put files in a shared folder and had a co-worker delete them has been numerous.  I will only share files by link. 

If I hadn't had so many instances of having to relocate files and repost them to the shared folder, I would have assumed I was wrong. But I don't know where you're getting your information or use case.

And answer the question: does your W2 / 1099 come from Dropbox or a parent company or somehow mean you work for them?

[dougkepple]

DROPBOX needs to rectify this.  The issue likely lies with space issues in the  physical hard drive files.  There is supposed to be a way to make dropbox online only.  All of the information and videos I found were all irrelevant.  DROPBOX: Please post a response relatable and up-to-date instructions today so we can access THE STORAGE SPACE WE ARE PAYING FOR!!

[Rich]

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@Harry Molyneux wrote:
What benefit is there to having it sync not in real time?

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It does sync in real-time but it's not instantaneous like it would be if it were just one folder that everyone could see. It takes time, albeit a very short amount of time, to sync from one location to the other.

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Why are you defending this so adamantly? Do you work for Drop Box?

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I'm not defending anything. I'm providing information on how (and why) it works the way it does. No, I don't work for Dropbox. I'm a user, just like you.