Dropbox is so handy and so universally-used that it's probably the case that either you already use it to share files, or you haven't yet had a need to. Dropbox has changed over the years, though, and the current ways of sharing large files and whole folders are better. They're easier. They're also faster, in that you can do much more sharing directly from the Finder on your Mac, and only rarely going to Dropbox.com to do anything.
So if you need to send files to someone and they are just too big for email -- the files, not the someone -- or if you need to work with people on a common set of files, this Pointers will show you how. Using OS X, we've shared files, we've created folders to collaborate in, and we have survived. You don't need to be as melodramatic about it as we are, but you do need OS X Yosemite, though all of this should work on earlier versions of OS X too.
Previously on Dropbox
Dropbox is a service that lets you create a folder on your Mac that is always and constantly also available to you on your iOS devices, on any Windows machines you pass by, on any Internet-connected computer anywhere in the world -- when you want it to be, thanks to the Dropbox "cloud." For free, you can get up to 2GB of space. For money, you can get up to 1TB (that's 1,000GB) of space. Everything works the same, so you can try this sharing out with the free account as easily as you can the paid.
You can get more free space:
go to Dropbox.com via this link, and you'll get an extra 500Mb of space for free. Dropbox obviously wants you to spread the word, and if you invite friends to join, you get extra space and so do they.
Now, read on.
Sharing files first
Drag something in to your local Dropbox folder, and wait a moment. The Dropbox icon in your menubar will whirr and when that file has been uploaded to Dropbox, a green tick is added to the icon or if you're in list view, to the name of the file.
Right-click on that file. Alongside the usual Open, Get Info and similar options, you now have three more Dropbox-specific ones including Share Dropbox Link. Choose that, and a link to the file will be popped onto your clipboard. Just paste that link into an email to someone, and you're done.
Next, folders
Sharing files really means sending someone the file: they can then take it and do anything they like -- except change your copy. When you're collaborating with someone, all parties need the ability to both make changes to the files -- and to do that, you need to share the folder those files are in.
Create that folder, or drag it in to Dropbox, then do the same moment's wait and the same right click to, this time, get the option Share This Folder. So far, so familiar, but this doesn't pop a link onto your clipboard, it instead takes you to Dropbox.com. You'll need to login, and then it takes you to a sharing page.
That page is a form that asks for the email address of the person you want to share with. It gives you the option to set whether they can only read the folder, or whether they can edit it. Then it gives you space to write them a nice note. When you're done, that note gets emailed off to them.
If they're not a Dropbox user, they get an invitation to join Dropbox. If they are, they get the option to include the folder in their own Dropbox.
Train your colleagues
People don't understand Dropbox: they think it's a backup, and that's going to hurt them in the future. They also tend to not quite follow what you mean when you send them a link. If you send them a link to download a video, for instance, they are as likely to click on it to watch as they are to right-click on it to download. We've had this: we've had this bad. We begged someone to just download the video, and then do with it what they needed, but instead they clicked and Macs being the helpful things they are, OS X played the video. He then sent that link around social media inviting everyone else to click to watch. Twenty minutes later, Dropbox closed us down for excessive bandwidth use.
This is better now: Dropbox has imposed a limit. Your recipient can only watch up to 15 minutes on a preview page within Dropbox's website. For anything else, they have to download.
Forget the public
One thing for old hands at Dropbox: your Public folder is no more. It's still there, you can still use it, but its special sharing powers are now no different to anything else in your Dropbox. This is sufficiently true that new hands at using Dropbox won't even know what the Public folder was: it's no longer created in new accounts.
We still have a Public folder, because it was there when we started, and you had to use it for things you were sharing publicly. From sheer habit, we still do, and it's not a bad idea to have one folder that you set aside for doing this. That way you can be sure that you never accidentally share anything you don't want to.
-- William Gallagher (
@WGallagher)
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