Lost many .RVT revit files that were worked on for several months

Dear @Jess Nahon,

Good day, and I appreciate the detailed explanation of your concern. I’m truly sorry this happened. Losing access to Revit project files that represent thousands of hours of work, especially after months of effort on active projects is incredibly stressful and understandably upsetting. As a forum moderator, I genuinely wish I could directly access your account or delve into the backend systems to diagnose and fix this for you. However, our role here is limited to providing general guidance and solutions that can be applied by users. 

From my research, this is a very common issue when Revit files are stored or synced through consumer cloud services such as Dropbox (and sometimes SharePoint or OneDrive). The good news is that your files are very likely not permanently lost. Dropbox maintains strong version history and deleted‑file recovery, and Revit itself stores local backups, cache files, and journal records that often allow projects to be restored. Please work through the steps below carefully.

1.Check Dropbox on the web

• Go to dropbox.com and sign in.
• Click All files > look in your project folders.
• Check Deleted files (left sidebar) and use Dropbox Rewind or version history on any folder/file.
• Right-click any missing .RVT > Restore or download previous versions.
• Also check shared folders and the “Recently changed” or search for your project names. Dropbox can recover files even if they were moved, renamed, or appeared deleted during the sync.

2.Look in your local Dropbox folder on the computer

• Open File Explorer and go to your Dropbox folder (usually C:\Users[YourUsername]\Dropbox or whatever custom location you chose).
• Search for your project names or .rvt.
• Look for conflicted copies (e.g., “filename (conflicted copy).rvt”).
• Pause Dropbox sync first (right-click the Dropbox icon in system tray > Pause syncing) so nothing overwrites anything.

Check Revit’s local cache and backup folders (this often finds the exact local copies that “disappeared”)

• Open Revit > go to File > Options > Cloud Model tab (or for older versions: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Autodesk\Revit[Your Revit Version]\CollaborationCache).
• Inside the CollaborationCache folder you’ll see GUID-named subfolders, open them and look for your .RVT files.
• Also check the original project folder for a backup subfolder (Revit automatically saves dated backups here).

Additionally, for problems of this nature, I recommend that the Global Admin in your organization create a service request with Microsoft Support. A technical support engineer can perform a remote session to investigate the situation, verify the backend configurations, and run any necessary synchronization tools to resolve the problem. If the issue requires further attention, they can escalate it to a specialized team for deeper analysis. For detailed instructions on how to get support, please refer to Get support - Microsoft 365 admin.

I hope this information helps point you toward recovering your work. Please take these steps methodically and let me know what you find. If you have any questions or need further assistance, feel free to reply in the comments so I can continue to support you. Thank you for your patience and understanding. I look forward to your update.

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it.

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.