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fcaco's avatar
fcaco
Explorer | Level 4
3 years ago

Re: Sharing a File With Someone Who Doesn't Have Dropbox Installed

I've tried to share a file with a person using the link (read only) option but it just doesn't seem to work. I feel so dumb as the instructions are very clear! Any thoughts? And also, if I share with a person and they don't have dropbox, do they have to get dropbox to be able to view the file? Thanks for any help.

 

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  • Hannah's avatar
    Hannah
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hey fcaco, thanks for reaching out to us!

     

    You can definitely share files with people who don't have a Dropbox account; through a 'view-only' shared link.

     

    Can you let us know more about why it's not working for you?

  • fcaco's avatar
    fcaco
    Explorer | Level 4
    3 years ago

    Thanks, Hannah.  My goal is to be able to give visual access only to some dropbox files occasionally. When I follow the instructions I copy the link to a dropbox file and I understand it then  sits on my computer clipboard. From experimentation I learn I then have to leave dropbox and open my gmail account, address the email to my intended recipient, click the paste command in the message part of the email and voila the view-only access link is sent.  So far okay, but then when the recipient receives the email the SENDER is listed as me, personally, not my non-profit group who has the dropbox account. To remedy this I went back to see if I could "share" the link directly from dropbox to my recipient without having to go into my personal email account.  When I do that it does indeed share the link BUT it's requiring the recipient to have a dropbox account of their own to view it. 

    I would like to know if there is a way to send the link to a file from the dropdown box in dropbox so that I don't need to leave dropbox and go to my personal email to send it.

  • Jay's avatar
    Jay
    Icon for Dropbox Community Moderator rankDropbox Community Moderator
    3 years ago

    Hi fcaco, currently, there isn't an option to send a shared link to a file or folder directly via the Dropbox site. It would need to be pasted into another document, email or message to be sent manually to another another.

     

    What you created instead when sharing via the site is a shared file, which can only be accessed with a Dropbox account.

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