Exchanging files with Dropbox.
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenbom here for
Askleo.com. Dropbox is a powerful tool for sharing
files and exchanging files. We normally think of it as a great tool to use if we have multiple computers
and have the same files show up across all of our devices, be it computers, PCs,
Macs, or mobile devices or whatever. But as it turns out, Dropbox is also very good at sharing or
exchanging files with other Dropbox users and with people who've
never used Dropbox at all. There are three scenarios that I want
to walk through that are all related to sharing, but because they're all
related to sharing and because they're all a little bit different,
they're done a little bit differently using Dropbox,
and that can get a little confusing. The first one is basically
you have a file in Dropbox and you want to share it with someone else who doesn't
necessarily have a Dropbox account. The second is someone else who doesn't necessarily have a Dropbox account
wants to share some files with you. Then third, two people who have Dropbox accounts want to collaborate on some
files to work on some things together. The first scenario is actually
fairly straightforward. I'm going to fire up Windows File Explorer and you can see I have Dropbox
installed on this machine. In fact, you can see the Dropbox icon
in the notification area down here. The Dropbox folder has some stuff in it,
an example folder and an example document. If I right click on the example document, in Windows 10, this may be
included in the menu that pops up. In Windows 11, we need to actually click on the Dropbox submenu e
and click on Not Share. That's something else.
We'll talk about that here in a minute. What we want to do is
copy the Dropbox link. What that has done is it's copied a link
that will allow somebody else, anybody else, to view the file
that we've just mentioned. You can then share that
link however you like. You can send them an email, you can send them an instant
message, whatever you want whatever. To show you what it is they get, I'm going to open an in private
window here in Edge so that I'm not automatically logged into anything
and paste that link. That's what it looks like. It looks like long, complicated
numbers and letters. Now you'll notice that it immediately says, Hey, do you want
to create a Dropbox account? You don't have to. Just close this and then at the same time, go ahead and accept or
decline all the cookies. The bottom line here, though, is that what this person is now viewing
is the document that we shared. In this case, it's a Word document, a Doc
X document exampledocument.docx. Dropbox knows how to show
that contents of that file to us. If it were an image, if it were something else, most of the
time, Dropbox will do the right thing. Notice that all they can do is
view the document. They can't make any changes to it. They can download it so they can make
a copy of the document to their own PC, or they can save a copy to their
own Dropbox if they have one. Again, I'm assuming they don't. I'm assuming you're just wanting to share a file that you happen to have
in your Dropbox with someone else. You can also do this to folders,
so you can share a folder and then the recipient will be able to
view all of the contents of that folder. Again, they won't be able to make
any changes, but they can view. Very handy for sharing things with others,
maybe a collection of pictures. Speaking of a collection of pictures, what if somebody else has some pictures
that they want to share with you? They want to give you the files
associated with those pictures. That's a little different. Unfortunately, to make this happen,
we actually need to go to dropbox. Com online. Now, here I am in dropbox.
Com. I've already signed in to
my free Dropbox account. I'm going to create a new folder,
mostly because it's a good way to manage what other people might be uploading
into your Dropbox account. I will call this
Uploads From L eo for moment. It's only me and I'm not going
to set up any automations. Go back to all files and you can see here that we have
this new folder called Uploads From L eo. I'm going to right click on it and this time down in activities,
click on request files. That's what we're going to create here,
a link that requests people upload files and then places those files in this
folder that we've just created. A title makes some amount of sense. This is what your recipients will see. You can add a description if you want to. Honestly, I've not yet found
a good reason to do that. Usually, you're already having a conversation with whomever it is
you're wanting to upload files. This is a confirmation of where
those files are going. They're going in my
Uploads From Leo folder. There are a number of Pro options
that honestly you don't necessarily need, but this is the free account, so you
can see all of the things you can't do. We'll create this request. Now, there are two ways of sharing
this request with others. You can either copy the link and then get that link to them again,
like before, through email, through messenger, through whatever
mechanism makes the most sense for you. Or you can enter names
and email addresses here. It'll pick from your
contacts or from wherever. Dropbox will send an email
to them with the request. Personally, I just like copying. Again, I copied the link to the clipboard. I will craft my own email with my own contacts saying, Hey,
upload your files here. What is it that they're going to see? Well, it's actually
fairly straightforward. Once again, I'm going to open an in private
window in Edge so that I'm not signed into Dropbox, and we'll just
paste that link and go to it. What it is is a drop target. They can now drag and drop files onto this, or they can, of course,
use the Add files button to do a traditional file open to go and get
files that they might want to share. I'm going to go to One Drive, and I
think I have some art here, desktop art. I'll just do this one. It's a background image that I
use on some of my machines. It is a case where you need to add your name and email address so that somebody
knows where the pictures came from. But again, this is your recipient. These are the people who you have asked to
upload files into your Dropbox account. They hit Upload and boom,
the file is uploaded. It will show up in your Dropbox. And as soon as it's finished uploading,
we'll go look at that. Now, I need to be clear here. Your recipient no longer has access. They don't have access to your Dropbox. All they can do is upload files into it. But once the files are uploaded,
they have no control. You do.
It's in your Dropbox. They have no access to your Dropbox. We'll go ahead and close this.
We'll say done on that. We'll go back to all files. Now if we take a look at the contents of the Uploads From Leo
folder, sure enough, there's a file that was just uploaded
by this random other person, Leo@ask Leo. Com. That's a great way to get one or more or lots of files, folders,
whatever it is that other people who aren't necessarily using Dropbox
want to share or transfer to you. It shows up in your Dropbox account
in your Dropbox folder. In fact, if I now go to the Dropbox folder on my machine, if I look at Uploads
from Leo, the files there too. It's been automatically synchronized across all of the machines that are
logged into this same Dropbox account. That's getting files from someone else. What if instead
you want to work with someone? Well, we don't need the web
for this one right now. We will take a look
at our Dropbox account. Here's my Dropbox folders. This is all of what's in this
particular Dropbox account. I am going to use my example
folder as my example. I am going to share this example folder
with someone else who has a Dropbox account so that we can both work
on the contents of this folder together. We'll right click on the folder,
Dropbox, again, click on Share. Now, this is where you can do
either of a couple of things. You can share a link like we have before,
or you can enter email addresses. In this case, I'm going to go ahead
and let Dropbox do the work for me. Askleo.com is who I'm going
to share this link with. This can edit is a very
important thing to at least understand. It can be can edit or can view.
Collaboration. When it comes to collaboration,
can edit is the point. You want both individuals
who have access to this folder to work on the contents of the folder
at the same time. That means they both
need to be able to edit. Now, I keep saying both. Honestly, you can share with as many people as you like, as long as
they all have Dropbox accounts. We're sharing with leo@askleo. Com and that's it. Now, I'm not going to show
you what leo@askleo. Com gets.
He will get an invitation. There are two important aspects of that
invitation that are worth understanding. One is it's an invitation. Nothing happens until your recipient actually accepts the invitation
to be able to access that folder. This is important because it prevents
random people from basically throwing random things and folders
at your Dropbox account. You need to accept the invitation
to be able to access the folder. The second is that accepting allows that
person to access the folder at dropbox.com online. But it is not yet or not automatically
made a part of their own Dropbox. That's a separate step that they take
called Add to Dropbox that will then make the folder you've shared
show up in their Dropbox. Now in our case, I have an example folder
with some contents in it, and the person that I've shared it with,
once they accept and add to their own Dropbox, has that same folder
with the same contents. And as we both make changes to the contents of that folder,
those updates are automatically synchronized between our two accounts
and all of our machines. That's what collaboration
is really all about. Now, there's one final caveat that I have to throw out here when it comes to
collaboration and sharing in this manner. The size of what's in this shared folder counts against each Dropbox account
individually. This currently is a free account. It's limited to two gigabytes. If I share with it a folder
from a paid account that has more than two gigabytes, well, then this account is
instantly out of space. The key take away there is simply that
be aware of how much is in these shared folders and understand that if you are
sharing folders or anything with users of free
Dropbox accounts, you could be blowing their Dropbox out
of the water in terms of size. The only solution, there are
really only two solutions here. One is don't put so much in that folder. Make sure it is manageable for whatever the other person
is already using their Dropbox for. Remember, they may not have
a full two gigabytes available. If they're using Dropbox themselves, even with a free account,
they may have stuff in there and may not have the full space available for whatever
it is you're attempting to share. So manage what you're sharing
appropriately. If you can't, if you really do need
to share the full greater than 2 gigabytes or whatever it
is, then the only real solution is for the other person
to upgrade to a paid account. It will be up to you and them to negotiate
whether or not that's a proper solution for whatever it is
you're attempting to do. So I hope that helps
understand a little bit of what's available with Dropbox and the kinds
of things you can do with it. We have covered basically sharing files
from your Dropbox to anyone, whether they have Dropbox or not, accepting files
into your Dropbox from anyone, whether or not they have a Dropbox
of their own, and finally collaborating by sharing a Dropbox folder between
multiple users so that you can all be accessing and making changes
to the content simultaneously. I hope that helps. For updates, for related links, for more
pictures and explanations, visit ask askleo.com/152795. I'm Leo Notenboom. This is
Askleo.com. Thanks for watching.
