How to manage your team’s Dropbox storage

Team admins can access a range of tools and features that allow you to monitor, control, and optimize your Dropbox team’s storage space. 

What counts towards your team storage space?

Anything in your team’s shared space, including team folders, shared folders owned by the team, and content stored in your team member's folders will count against your team’s available storage space. Folders behave differently depending on their ownership and membership. 

For example:

• Team folders use your team’s storage space and don't count towards the team member's storage limit.
• External shared folders use your team’s storage space if added to your team’s Dropbox.
• Shared folders owned by members use your team's storage space and count against the individual member's storage limit.
• Replay and Backup content owned by members uses your team's storage space and counts against the individual member's storage limit.

Learn how shared folders impact your storage space.

How to see what storage space your team is using 

Admins can create, view, and download reports that show how their team and individual members are using their storage space.

Team storage reports

This report tells you what’s using team storage space, including:

• Team folders and subfolders
• Shared folders (internal and external)
• Private folders from members (active, suspended, or removed)
• Archived and app-created folders

Learn how to create a team storage report.


Member reports 

See what each individual team member can access, and how much storage space they’re using: 

• Member data report: Shows usage, limits, and file access for each user
• Member access report: Shows what folders each user can access

These can help you investigate overages or unusual access patterns.


Storage trends

You can get a clear, real-time overview of how your team members are using their storage. In the Storage trends section of the admin console dashboard, you can:

• See the total storage used by your team over time. 
• See the storage used by each member of your team.
  • Note: The Storage trends section shows the top 10 team members by storage use. To see all your team members, click See all members.
• Quickly spot who’s using the most storage and who may be close to their limit.

How to manage storage limits

Team admins can set individual storage limits for members to prevent accidental overages. Learn how to limit how much storage space a Dropbox team member can use.

How to optimize storage space for your team

Storage cleanup

If your team is approaching its storage limit, you can use the Manage storage cleanup tool to get an overview of storage use and recommendations on how to save storage space.

From the Manage storage cleanup tool, you can view files and folders, view how much storage they’re using, and take actions if needed:

1. Click ☑ (more options) next to the folder you’d like to manage.
2. Click More.
3. Click Manage storage.
4. Filter content by Largest or Last Activity.
5. Hover over the content you’d like to take action on:
   • To delete the content, click Delete.
   • To open the content in a new tab, click ☑ (open).

Learn how to recover deleted files and folders.

Manage offboarded members’ storage

Deleting users doesn’t instantly free up space. Files and backups remain unless removed, so it’s recommended to: 

• Transfer ownership of user content before deletion
• Permanently delete removed private content and backups

Learn how to manage deleted team members’ files.

Upgrade or add more storage space

If you’re approaching the limit for your team, admins can:

• Upgrade plans
• Purchase additional storage space

Learn how to get more storage space.

How to troubleshoot storage space issues 

To resolve sync or hard drive space issues, you can use:

• Selective sync: Choose which folders sync locally
• Online-only files: Keep files in the cloud only

Learn how to troubleshoot hard drive space issues.