All my files shows as 0 bytes both on desktop and website

[ruth_willmott]

Hi, I have been using DropBox for years. I recently had my laptop stolen and when I went to login to my DropBox it has told me that my DropBox has been full since April (without my knowing). Aside this however, nearly all of my documents (pre-dating April) now show as 0 bytes (on Dropbox through web and on desktop). I don't know how to get these files back. Given my DropBox storage had reached capacity in April, presumably all files before this were saved. Everytime I try and open there is nothing there !

[Hannah]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, @ruth_willmott.

It's strange that they show as 0 bytes on the website as well, but let's see what we can find.

If you look through the version history of the files, are you able to find and restore previous versions of your files with their actual size that can be previewed?

Let me know what you find.

[ruth_willmott]

[Jay]

Hi @ruth_willmott, as that file, and presumably others, show up as zero bytes on the Dropbox site, this means that somehow empty files were synced to the site via your desktop machine.

Due to this, there wouldn't be any data to recover from those files via Dropbox, since they were originally uploaded like that. 

Is it possible that you had another cloud provider scanning the Dropbox folder, and marking those files as online-only?