On occasion, you may find data inaccuracies on your account, which could be in the form of:
- Storage allotment in the Admin Console (displayed on graphs or your managed users may tell you that they keep deleting content, but aren't reclaiming the storage space) Note: This is only applicable if you are the Admin or Co-Admin of your company's enterprise.
- Your account says you are "out of free space" even though you know you are not (you may have tried deleting things, but the storage space in not reclaimed; you have added up the file sizes yourself)
- Folder storage size
- Folder file counts (ex. the folder has 5 items, but it says it only has 4 in it)
- "Updated by" person (ex: user John last updated a file, yet it still says that the person who edited it before him was the last to update it)
- "Updated by" timestamp (ex: you know you edited the file on Tuesday, yet it reports Monday)
If you ever come across these data inaccuracies in your account, please know that the problem is entirely with the display of these totals. This has no effect on your underlying data. All of your files remain in place and have not decreased in size or been edited by unauthorized people.
Keep in mind the following information about storage calculations:
- Trash is excluded from your overall storage calculation.
- If you are collaborating with another user in a folder they own, the storage is calculated only as part of the owner's account and will not count toward your storage calculation.
Why does this happen?
A folder will often have several sub-folders, with additional sub-folders below them (and so on). Within each sub-folder, there can be files that are continuously being added, edited, and deleted by multiple people at any given moment. The countless activities, combined with the massive scale at which Box supports, makes it incredibly difficult to accurately display aggregated data points throughout our product at all times. If a folder’s storage space calculation is inaccurate due to these issues, the inaccuracies also impact the overall storage calculations for both the user and Enterprise.
How can Box help?
Most of the time, aggregates will be updated within an hour (for example the user aggregates) or less. For larger changes or more complex folder structures, aggregates may take up to 24 hours to be correct. In rare cases, the file count and size might take few days to a week to be updated.