Shared Folders not working- half of my students cannot access their folder,must finish this weekend

[KWhy]

 

 

Hello everyone! 

I've sent shared files links (edit) to my students, but about half of them are unable to access the shared folders (roughly 15 out of 30). It says - Who can access, only you - instead of Who can access, 2 members. 

I sent the edit link and made a video showing students that they must click the blue button that says SAVE TO DROPBOX or ADD TO DROPBOX. 

I thought this was not working due to the limit of shared folders in one folder, so I created new folders (however they do have the same very first folder, which might be called the parent folder). 

I counted the numbers, and I expected to see only 10 folders working in each of the 2 parent folders, but it's only 7 in each folder. 

So maybe the shared folder limit is not the problem here.

Please see the image attached of shared folders, one successfully shared, and the second not successfully shared (ignore the middle image as I haven't attempted to share this folder yet). 

I have tried two things: 

1) When I created more folders, and didn't have 10 shared folders in the one folder, it still didn't work for one of my students. (see image attached, email conversation)

 

2) When I added the students email to the "share this folder" it worked, even though when I gave them the link it didn't work. 

Also, I upgraded to Professional to help solve this problem (from the free account) and it doesn't seem to have fixed the problem

I was hoping to finish this tonight and would really appreciate anyones help! 

[Mark]

Hi @KWhy 

Your students need to set up a Dropbox account and accept the shares individually - they also can only do that if the total of the shared folder is lower than the quota they have (usually 2gb). Could that be the issue? 

[KWhy]

Thanks so much for your reply Mark! 

Yes I this group of students already had a Dropbox account for other folders we've shared (albeit from a different account of mine). 

And yes I sent the students links individually. I did change them to bit.ly links but I've never had any issues with that before. 

Also, at the time of sharing the folders, there was only one or two PDFs in the folders... 

So I'm not sure what the issue is - do you happen to have any other ideas? 

Thank you kindly Mark! 

[Здравко]

Hi @KWhy,

In your questions you are mixing 2 different things: shared folder and links to folders. The same folder can be only shared, only pointed by a link, or both shared and pointed by a link! You are talking for them as a single thing - which is incorrect and source of your confusion (most probably).

 - If you share some folder, recipients need Dropbox account and enough free space there (shared content counts to engaged capacity both to your account and recipient's accounts). If some recipient doesn't have enough free space, it is gonna get in overquota state! You can see all your shared folders here. Further for every single shared folder you can see who has access to this folder (ellipsis menu -> Share -> Who can access).

 - If you share using link, recipients don't need Dropbox account (in this case it's something optional). The folder content can be downloaded directly on particular device (mobile or not) or added to recipient' Dropbox account (if any). Such content is NOT in sync! On every update from your side recipient can access recent version using the link - whatever already downloaded or added to recipient's account is not updated automatically (only shared folder keep the things in sync). You can see all your links here. There is no way to track who got to particular link.

Clarify to yourself what actually are you doing. 😉

Good luck.