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jordanrobison's avatar
jordanrobison
New member | Level 2
6 years ago
Solved

Downloading files from shared link

I was able to email a link to one of my Dropbox folders to someone who is not on Dropbox. They can view the files in the folder (in their web browser). However, there doesn't appear to be any option to download a file to their computer (for example, PDF or MP4 file). How do they do this?

Thanks,

Jordan

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  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    6 years ago

    Thanks for the reply Jordan - sorry to hear this persists.

    At this point, if you've already restarted the affected device, could you check if there's an antivirus, firewall or even a VPN/proxy setting that could be causing this? 

    On a side note, could you try another network or any other devices to see if the dowload button works normally? 

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  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    6 years ago

    Hey there jordanrobison - how are you today?

    If they want to download a specific file from the folder, they'll need to click on it to preview it and then select 'Download' from the upper right corner or else they should be seeing an option for direct download as shown below:

     

    If they're not seeing this option, have them clear their browser's cache, an incognito window or even a  completely different browser than the one they originally used to access the shared link in question.

    Let me know how it goes!

  • jordanrobison's avatar
    jordanrobison
    New member | Level 2
    6 years ago

    None of that seemed to work. We tried three different browsers: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Firefox. The Download button on the upper right doesn't seem to do anything (nothing in Downloads folder). My friend is using Windows 10.

  • Walter's avatar
    Walter
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    6 years ago

    Thanks for the reply Jordan - sorry to hear this persists.

    At this point, if you've already restarted the affected device, could you check if there's an antivirus, firewall or even a VPN/proxy setting that could be causing this? 

    On a side note, could you try another network or any other devices to see if the dowload button works normally? 

  • Nate_C's avatar
    Nate_C
    Icon for Super User rankSuper User
    6 years ago

    Hello,

    Try adding ?dl=1 to the end of the shared link URL. If there is already a ?dl=0 in the URL, change the 0 to 1. When you visit the link with ?dl=1 appended, it should automatically download the file.

  • jordanrobison's avatar
    jordanrobison
    New member | Level 2
    6 years ago
    Reboot seemed to solve problem; now Download button works. ???
    Thanks!

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