I've lost an excel file in dropbox -- How does dropbox work..?

November 23, 2018 12:46 PM

I set up dropbox a long time ago for a family member, and now I have to find a file.... It's not in dropbox's "deleted files" because I think it wasn't synced. But it's no longer in the dropbox folder on a Win7 machine, either.

Apparently, there were warnings messages that dropbox needed 500MB free on the hard drive to continue syncing, but the warnings were ignored. The file was created before those warnings started.

I'm looking at the storage space on this PC -- and it looks like the dropbox folder is HUGE (many gigabytes even though there are not that many files in it) --- and it's actually the largest folder on this PC. I was looking to see if I could clear off the hard drive space, but it looks like dropbox is eating up the hard drive. So now I'm wondering how do I even try to recover this file if it's on this hard drive, trapped in dropbox somewhere?

posted by mhh5 to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

Can you log on to the dropbox account online and search for the file there?

On Win7 you can right-click on a folder to check its Properties, which includes the size it and its children occupy (as you probably know).
If you set Windows Explorer to show hidden items (I think that's an option on the View menu, but don't have Win7 to check) then you should be able to drill down and discover what's taking up the space.
posted by anadem at 3:46 PM on November 23, 2018 [1 favorite]

You may have already checked this, but when you first launch excel, check the “recent files” list. It might be there. Even if it’s not, you might check the folders in which those recent files are stored.
posted by johnxlibris at 9:51 AM on November 24, 2018