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yfranco's avatar
yfranco
New member | Level 2
2 years ago
Solved

How can I share folders with a non-team member without adding them to my team?

How can I share a folder with an individual without them being added as a member to our organizations Dropbox account? I want to be able to share a folder without them being added to our team as we w...
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  • asfsfsgweffsd's avatar
    asfsfsgweffsd
    10 months ago

    Thanks Rich. Dropbox support just helped me work this out. I shared the folder as normal, but apparently the way Dropbox formats emails to the recipients (or some part of the "accepting the share" process) encourages the recipient to click "join this team" (or something similar). So I end up getting an email saying "XYZ wants to join your team"; and when I go to the admin console, it says "invite pending review; you need one additional licence". It's very misleading, making me think I need to add a new licence so that the sharee can view the shared folder. 

    I've had this with other clients whom I send public links to (rather than try to share a folder with); I end up getting emails saying they want to join my team. So Dropbox Support brought my attention to the feature that lets you turn it off:

    1. Open this page:
      https://www.dropbox.com/team/admin/settings/membership_approval.
    2. Turn off the ''Coworkers can ask to join your team'' option.

    Halleluiah!

Koen W.'s avatar
Koen W.
Helpful | Level 5
6 months ago

Hi Nancy,

Yes - it now has been resolved. I wanted to just leave the solution here, in case anyone else runs into this issue.

It turns out that there are sharing restrictions that you can implement on groups of people. Personally I belong to multiple groups and certain groups had restrictions on sharing - I was unaware of it, and it was probably done unintentionally. Anyway, if you belong to even just one group that has restricted sharing rules, you cannot share any folder - even folders that are not linked to groups with sharing restrictions. Once we removed the sharing restrictions on each of the affected groups, the problem was resolved.

Best regards

Koen

 

Megan's avatar
Megan
Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
6 months ago

Hey Koen W.​, happy Monday! 

Thanks for sharing more updates about the case!

If you need something else, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help every step of the way.  Wishing you a great week ahead. 😇

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