Why can't you drag and drop an Outlook attachment from an email into the drop area in DropBox?

[Eliana H.]

I know that you can save the attachment and then click and drag or install the DropBox client but I want to know why your can't do it directly from within Outlook.

[Richard P.]

Because Outlook doesnt support the filesystem hooks that a browser must use to grab the file when presented with a file drop event. Its an Outlook issue, not a Dropbox website or browser issue.

[Arun B.2]

No websites support dragging directly from Outlook, but you can drag an attachment from Outlook to Dropbox directly by installing a utility called Outlook2web. This let's you drag and drop into a lot of websites, and it definately works for Dropbox because they show it on the video on the site.

[Arpine M.]

I dragged attachments from drafted email to dropbox and all the attachments disappeared. Now they don't appear neither in dropbox nor in my draft email. Could you help me please, where have they gone?   

[Rick M.]

u moved the attach.

[Arpine M.]

So they are not copied anywhere? Usually when you drag from outlook to somewhere, the copy still remains. 

[Richard P.]

You would have to ask that question in an Outlook-related forum I am afraid, Arpine - if the browser doesn't accept the "drop" event (because Outlook doesnt support it as a source) then Dropbox never saw the file and wouldn't know anything about it.

In this case, Outlook was the only application that knew anything about the file.

[Arpine M.]

Thanks for explaining

[Christopher P.14]

You can do this, but you need to use Outlook2Web to do it. It works very well with Dropbox.

// disclaimer - owner of the software.

[Ed]

Hi everyone, 

Are you still using Outlook? If so, are you interested in trying out a new Dropbox add-in we're working on for MS Outlook? You can read more about it here.

Thanks!