view only link for everyone says Join Folder, Copy to Dropbox, Download. I DON'T want Join Folder.

Hannah Is anything going to be done about this issue? Or, at least, are Dropbox going to acknowledge that it does not suit some use-cases and offer an alternative solution? The 'Join Folder' option is causing us endless frustration and it feels as though we are banging our heads against a brick wall trying to get any sort of resolution.

Hi @Hannah. My organization has used Dropbox for many years, as an internal file store, and also to share things out publicly to our customers. It's been great; we've had no issues.

But with this "Join Folder" change, my fellow teams admins and I are starting to get lots of notifications and emails about people "Requesting to Join." We don't care for them to Join the Folder. We want them to simply download the files we're providing to them and that's it. Often, these files aren't changing, so there's no reason for them "to see live changes and updates as they happen," as per the August Update.

One of my co-workers recently sent out a marketing email, with a link to a Dropbox folder to download some images. This went out to several hundred of our customers. And now us Dropbox Team Admins are getting a lot of these notifications of people wanting to "Join Folder" instead of downloading. Probably because they're not realizing what they're clicking. And that the  "Join Folder" button is more prominent than the Download button.

We're getting enough email notifications that our spam filter is thinking these notifications are spam. I was looking through our quarantine today and saw several Dropbox notifications. That's not great for you guys. Or us; we may start missing important notifications because of this.

At the very least, is there a way for us turn off these notifications or cease the need to approve View Only joining? According to the August Update, "Join Folder" joins people to the folder as View Only members. OK, if they're View Only, then why do I have to approve it? Let them add it to their own Dropboxes without my approval. It's their Dropbox space they're eating up, not ours that we pay for.

I can understand approval if they had access to Edit the contents within the folder. We definitely don't want to give out Edit access to hundreds of people. But it's just View Only (since a View Only link was created and shared).

Further, it's not even a great approval system. I just created a test folder in my org's Dropbox, created a View Only link, opened it with my separate, personal Dropbox account, and then requested to join the folder with my personal account.

Then on my work Dropbox account, I got the notification. I thought it'd at least be one-click approval or something. Nope, it takes me to the standard share out screen, I have to edit the options to make it View Only, and then send the invitation back out, as if the request was never made in the first place. It's cumbersome.

I think there are lots of ways to improve this. Give us the option to allow downloads but disallow joins. Allow us to turn off admin notifications and/or auto-approve View Only join requests. And make the View Only join request process simpler.

As someone that is testing out Dropbox for use when sharing out digital products, I'm disappointed that this issue of "join folder" has been ongoing since October without any real follow up from support other than the "solution" which really isn't. I've followed the guides, I've adjusted and tweaked every possible share and manage setting and nothing changes. 
Now I am only using the free version as I wanted to run through some test scenarios, so I thought maybe it was some of the limits the free account has in regards to setting changes, but it appears even those with paid accounts have this issue. Hopefully Dropbox will acknowledge the concern and work on a proper resolution soon.

Hi Jason,

Thanks for letting us all know; this is great news! I appreciate you and the team willing to listen to customer feedback! 👍🏽

Absolutely GilesR32!  We employ a variety of methods to determine what is and isn't working for our users.  These forums are a valuable source of direct and deep feedback on how you all are using Dropbox and absolutely impacts our product decisions.  Please continue to stay engaged!

This is AMAZING news JasonSilverDBX, thank you!! 

Lets hope that it continues so that you guys do listen and learn from things! 🙂