Speaker 1: Steve Dotto here. How the heck are you doing this fine day? Me? I'm feeling that the beard has gotten pretty long and I'm feeling some judgment coming from the other side of the YouTube screen. Just saying. Today on DottoTech, you and I are going to discuss Dropbox sharing. I had one of those moments this week where I didn't know how to do something in Dropbox, had to figure it out. Maybe I knew it before but forgot it and maybe you know how to do this but you might have forgotten it as well. We're going to talk about all aspects of Dropbox file sharing today on DottoTech. So here is the story. I'm working on a project with a video designer and we're using Dropbox to send files back and forth. Now I've been sending her files just as with normal links for a while but then we wanted to set up a folder so she could drop files for me to check. We both kind of went, how do you do that? We had to kind of work our way through it. So my thanks to Liz for reminding me of this process and this is the thing that I think I forgot and you might not even know about. So let's take a look. Sharing files in Dropbox is pretty simple. Most of us have done it in the past and it is a very, very simple way to do things. Just from the Dropbox menu right on your computer, if you've got Dropbox installed on your PC or your Mac, you can choose any file or any folder. If you right-click your mouse or option-click, you can go in and you can copy the Dropbox link which allows you to send that link to somebody so that you can share that file with them. That is Dropbox 101, the basic, most simple way to use Dropbox. You can also if you choose and you are in Dropbox on the web, you've got your Dropbox account open, you can choose any of those, any folder or any file and by clicking on the Share tool here on the side, you can choose to share it directly with people creating links. You can set up whether or not they can edit the file or they can view the file. Now what's the difference? Well if you were say setting up a template that somebody was going to be using, a form that they're going to be using over and over again, you might set it up so that people can just view it so they can't edit the original. If they can view it, they can download it, they can modify it however they want and then they can save it to their local computer. Whereas if you allow them to edit it, it's like you're working on a collaborative document and they can actually go in and make changes to it. So you want to be very careful to make sure you have those parameters set up properly. In fact, if you're looking at editing most forms of documents, certainly any word processing document, far better than allowing them to edit the document right here within Dropbox is to start using Dropbox Paper, which we have done a video on, which I am absolutely enamored with. I think Dropbox Paper is an awesome collaborative editing tool. Having said that, let's now discuss the situation which I was talking about, which is allowing somebody else to upload a file into my Dropbox folder. It turns out it's pretty easy to do but it's a little bit Labyrinthian kind of walking through all of the different steps. So let me show you how we do that. In Dropbox, on the web, in their web client, you find this thing called a file request. I don't think it's particularly well-named. Do you? No. But if you click on File Requests, it allows you to set up a scenario where you're requesting a file from somebody else. Now the interesting thing is that you set up a file request but then you can determine which folder or where it's going to be stored in your Dropbox account. They really don't see any of the hierarchy of your Dropbox account. So here's how it happens. You click on Request File and this is My File I Need. There we go, My File I Need. So this is what they're going to see, is this title. I can determine actually within my Dropbox hierarchy where that is going to live. So for example, the project that I'm working on with Liz is I actually set up a little thing here called Liz Digital Assets, which is where I have all of the files from Liz Go. So I can click on that and choose that but just because I've done that doesn't mean that Liz gets to see where it goes. No, no, no. I go Next. Now I can choose an email address to send the link to or I can copy this link and I can use it and just email it to somebody so you can send other people, even people that don't have Dropbox, the ability to drop something in your Dropbox folder. This is what it looks like when they get it. Watch this. It's way cool. This is what the link looks like. Now even though it's going into the digital assets from Liz, this is what she sees when I send her the email. I need a file and then all they have to do is they have to choose it from their computer if they don't have a Dropbox account or if it's on their computer or they can choose it from Dropbox if they do have Dropbox. Isn't that awesome? And then that file is automatically dropped into the correct folder for you. So this creates some really nice workflow as far as file sharing going back and forth. Certainly for graphics type projects or video projects like we're working on here, this is ideal for her to upload test files or samples or final copy for me to work with. I really like this and I don't know why I forgot about it but I did. We hope that you found today's video to be useful. There are two things I need from you. I need you to subscribe to this channel. It helps me so much. Also, please subscribe to our newsletter. This helps you. That way you hear about any upcoming events, tutorials, webinars and trainings that we do here on DottoTech. Till next time, I am Steve Dotto. Have fun storming the castle.