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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 would then have to pay for eavh folder shared.
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:
- Open this page:
https://www.dropbox.com/team/admin/settings/membership_approval. - Turn off the ''Coworkers can ask to join your team'' option.
Halleluiah!
- Open this page:
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Sure,
Below are the screenshots. The first one is the sharing settings, the second one shows the folder settings from admin console/content/.../manage access. The issue seems to be that folder membership cannot be changed (set to 'team members only' and greyed out). If i cannot allow folder membership to anyone but the team, then obviously that will stop me sharing it to external customers.
The fact that this setting is greyed out seems to be at odds with the Sharing setting in the admin console. Very much feels like a bug to me, although there might be something I am overlooking.
Sharing from the 'all files' page makes no difference - i cannot share to people outside the team, and as per above, I am not allowed to change folder membership to anyone but the team....
Thanks for your help so far,Koen
- Nancy
Dropbox Community Moderator
Hi from me too, Koen! As a test, can you create one more folder in the same directory as the “Test folder” and let me know if you're unable to change its permissions, as well?
Feel free to do this via a different browser too, so that we can isolate the issue a bit more.
Hi Nancy,
I used Google Chrome this time instead of Edge, and created a second folder. Symptoms remain unchanged unfortunately.
It really seems like a bug, doesn't it? I mean, what other setting could there possibly be?
Regards,
Koen
- Nancy
Hi again, Koen! I can see that there was already a ticket logged for this, and it appears that the issue has now been addressed. That said, if I've misunderstood the case, don't hesitate to let me know.
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
