Dropbox is an incredibly powerful Cloud
Drive that allows you to send large files across the Internet, especially if
you have a Yahoo Email as described in my blog article
entitled “Dropbox
partners with Yahoo! Mail for Gigabyte File Sharing as CEO Marissa Mayer
Google’s Yahoo”.
Dropbox is even used on smartphones, with
a version of the handy Cloud Drive service now permanently embedded in BBM 2.0 for Blackberry users as
described in my blog
article entitled “BBM
2.0 now with Voice and Dropbox Integration – WhatsApp beaten for sure as Free
File Sharing and Voice Calling result in BBM Transcendence on Android and iOS”.
If
you have an Apple iPhone and you use Loom as you main means of storing pictures
in the Cloud, then you’d already have known too that Dropbox’s Carousel feature has now
replaced that service as described in my Geezam
blog article entitled “Dropbox
acquires iOS App Loom as it steamrolls towards the launch of its IPO”.
Cloud
Drives are a very handy way of sharing files online, especially Video without
the need to setup a YouTube account as explained in my blog article entitled
“How
to use Dropbox, Google Drive and Sound File Sharing Websites to Share and
Promote your Content online - Sharing is Caring”. After all, not every time
you go on the Internet at a Cyber Care, especially in May Pan, Clarendon, can
you get the chance to use your Thumb Drive.
So
how do you use Dropbox to share an
Online Folder? Well, this how-to came in handy the other day and based on my
experience, I’ve decided to share my experience in this handy DIY (Do It
Yourself).
Dropbox as an Online
Download Folder – How to allow anyone to download from your Dropbox Account
In
this step-by-step, I’ll focus exclusively on just sharing a Folder, as it’s not
as straightforward as it may seem.
If
you’ve read my blog
article entitled “How
to use Dropbox, Google Drive and Sound File Sharing Websites to Share and
Promote your Content online - Sharing is Caring”, you’d already know how to
upload Video content to Dropbox or Google Drive and share it. Make sure to do
that using your Dropbox Folder on your
Desktop, but makes sure this time to upload to the Folder labeled Public as it is part of the Procedure.
Please
note that you can’t share a Dropbox
folder by using a right-click as demonstrated my blog article above; that’s for
individual files. To share folders, you’ll first have to login to your
Web-based Dropbox Account as shown
below.
Once
you’re logged in, select the Public
folder to which you should have already placed the Folder with the items you
wish to share as show below.
Now
in my example, I’ve chosen to share the folder SD Card Recovery as highlighted
below. This folder contains 7 GB of
Data, which is excellent for this test, as it was Recovered Data from an SD
Card.
Now
for the fun part! Select the Share Link symbol that looks a lot like a Chain
Link at the upper Right hand corner of your Dropbox
Account.
The
following dialogue will appear. Now this dialog is completely irrelevant, as
this is really for sharing Data i.e. a download link or a Link to a picture within
your Dropbox via Email or Social
Media. To do this you’d click on the Get
Link Button and then enter the email in the Text box labeled Add Names or Emails.
Alternately,
you can close this dialogue box and choose to copy and paste the link yourself
for your folder. This you can do by right clicking on your Folder of choice, in
this case SD Card Recovery. An
option to Copy Link Address will
appear in the pop-out Dialog box, which you can use to copy the publicly
shareable URL (Universal Resource Locator) for the folder you wish to share.
Once
you’ve clicked Copy Link Address, you
can then choose to past that Link Address by clicking Ctrl + V or right
clicking over a Text File and pasting the URL onto the Text File as shown below.
You
can then save the Text file document on your Thumb drive or elsewhere and label
it with a name to remind you what folder the link represents. Then you can
share it via whatever means you desire, be it on Social Media or via email.
You
can even use a URL Shortening service such as Adf.ly or Bit.ly as described in my
blog article
entitled “How
to become an e-book Publishing House via e-book Piracy - Tablets in Schools
sets the Stage for Rampant e-book Piracy” and shorten it for easier sharing
via Mobile phone. At this point you can log out and test the shareable folder
URL to see if it works!
A
quick Note: With case of Google Drive, sharing
folder is much easier as described in my blog article entitled
“How
to use Dropbox, Google Drive and Sound File Sharing Websites to Share and
Promote your Content online - Sharing is Caring”. All you merely have to do
is right click on the Folder you want to share within the Google Share Drive and
the following dialog box will appear.
Then
select what options you want for Sharing, be it:
1.
Public on the Web (anyone searching can
access the content without having a Google
Drive Account)
2.
Anyone with the Link (anyone who has
received the link can access the content without having a Google Drive Account)
3.
Private (only persons the link is sent
to can access the content after having signed in to Google Drive Account and must be a friend)
This
is as illustrated below.
For
the resulting URL, you’ll definitely have to use as URL shortening service,
preferably Bit.ly.
For
this reason, I prefer Dropbox. Dropbox is an especially great way to
share confidential information from your workplace without other knowing about.
So
have fun sharing whole folders with Dropbox.
Remember sharing is caring so share this article with as many people as
possible.
Here’s
the links:
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