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Forum Discussion
Is there any way to prevent our colleagues from deleting team files?
There are multiple people that use our company's dropbox account. Ocassionaly a folder and all of it's contents accidentally get moved and slows our computers down extremley bad until the sync is co...
ManypplUse wrote:
There are multiple people that use our company's dropbox account.
Is this a single account being used on all their computers, a Dropbox Business account with separate licenses for each user, or separate Personal accounts for each person with each having access to a shared folder?
If it's a single account being used for everyone, then no, there's no way for Dropbox to prevent them from moving or deleting files.
If you're using a Dropbox Business account or if each user has their own account and you're using a shared folder, then you can assign view-only permissions to a shared folder. That would prevent moves and deletions, but it would also prevent editing, uploading and other changes.
The better solution is to train your people. This is a problem that exists not only in Dropbox, but any shared environment. I have users contacting me often about missing files or folders, and it's nearly always caused by an accidental drag and drop by someone else. I find that a few minutes of training with those users greatly reduces the number of instances.
We are a small non-profit with staff in 16 countries. We experience accidental mass deletions (> 40GB). How can I limit a team member's permissions so that they cannot accidentally delete a large amount of files? We use the restore and rewind functions but we do not have downtime in Dropbox since we are working in all time zones. We have been using Dropbox as our main storage for over 10 years and the one issue I always have is that it is too easy to accidentally do a mass deletion (by pulling a folder to your desktop, leaving your laptop unattended and a kid gets to it, etc.) We try to educate our team but are fully virtual and culturally extremely diverse. The only way I see right now is to remove staff as team members and give them permission to certain folders only but we moved away from that because it's hard to manage. Dropbox tells me there is nothing I can do. Really?
Hannah
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffHey Siaska, thanks for posting to the Dropbox Community.
At the moment, when it comes to Dropbox Business teams, there is a setting that helps prevent members from permanently deleting files and folders.
For simple deletions, there's no setting you can choose, if the members need to have edit access to the folders.
Otherwise, you can change the sharing permissions to give them view-only access.
I hope this helps, but let me know if you have any questions.
Hello Hannah,
I am not able to give some team members viewing access only to a folder. I foolowed your intructions. If there is a way to allow some team members to edit and others to view only a certain folder, can you please explain the steps because I did not manage.
Thanks,
Siaska
