You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.

Forum Discussion

Johanbvav's avatar
Johanbvav
Explorer | Level 3
6 months ago

I need to recover files that were stored in Dropbox before my account was downgraded

Dear Dropbox team,

Until a few months ago, I was one of your first Dropbox users since 2007. I primarily used your service to store valuable baby videos and photos of my daughter. 

Unfortunately, my subscription ended a few months ago. For the first time in 16 years, I found myself temporarily in a difficult financial situation since my Blockchain project failed due to the Ukraine/Russian war, and could not afford the increased Dropbox costs, despite my long-standing loyalty to Dropbox. 

Now, however, I can reactivate my subscription and urgently seek your help.

These videos and photos are not stored anywhere else and contain precious memories of the birth of my now 16-year-old daughter and her early years. These files are invaluable to our family.

Could you please check if these videos and photos are still in the cloud? I hope that Dropbox is a company with a heart and has not deleted these files. Your assistance would mean a great deal to us. If you didn’t delete our videos I would like to reactivate my subscription for the coming years.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Kind regards,

Johan

Amsterdam, the Netherlands

  • Nancy's avatar
    Nancy
    Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

    Hi Johanbvav! Thanks for posting on our Community about this. 

     

    Please keep in mind that we don't have account visibility on the forum, so we can't look into your Dropbox account. However, there are couple of things we can check together.

     

    In general, even if your Dropbox account downgrades from a paid subscription to a free Basic plan, you should still be able to access all of your files. What will happen is that you can’t upload more files or sync to linked devices till your account is under-quota again. 

     

    Did you delete these files or the Dropbox account instead, when the downgrade occurred? 

     

    Are you currently logged in to the same account that was previously upgraded? 

     

    Let me know, and we’ll go from there.

    • Johanbvav's avatar
      Johanbvav
      Explorer | Level 3

      Dear Nancy, that sounds hopeful!

      I see I use a recent Gmail email, I was not aware of having mutual Dropbox accounts.

      Through the years, with different companies of mine, I used a few accounts I see in my Lastpass. Now the one I think I used for my daughter's baby videos is on an old email address I don't use anymore.

      And I even have my password in LastPass for that account.

      However, after login, Dropbox shows a page with:

      Additional authentication is required
      We sent a code to johan@... and any devices you’ve linked to this account. Enter the code to continue.

      6-digit code

      Since I don't use that email address anymore (last year the subscription of that domain ended), what can I do?

      • Nancy's avatar
        Nancy
        Icon for Dropbox Staff rankDropbox Staff

        Thanks for sharing more info! Do you have any other devices that are still linked to that Dropbox account? If yes, please check their notifications as the code may be there. After you’ve entered the Dropbox account, you’ll need to update your email address immediately to one you can access.

         

        If this doesn’t work, I suggest you open a ticket with our support team directly (by following these exact steps). Don’t forget to share your ticket number with me; I can leave them a note on your behalf.

About Delete, edit, and organize

Solve issues with deleting, editing, and organizing files and folders in your Dropbox account with support from the Dropbox Community.

Need more support

If you need more help you can view your support options (expected response time for an email or ticket is 24 hours), or contact us on X or Facebook.

For more info on available support options for your Dropbox plan, see this article.

If you found the answer to your question in this Community thread, please 'like' the post to say thanks and to let us know it was useful!