Steve Dotto here. Today, Dropbox, everything you need to know about Dropbox in five minutes
or less. Are you ready? Go. Dropbox allows you to take any file on your
computer, and I do mean any file on your computer, put it into your Dropbox folder, store it
in a filed folder in your Dropbox folder, and then access that file on any of your devices,
on your phone, on your tablet, your notebook, and your other computers. It allows you to
have that file stored in the cloud. It�s synced using Dropbox�s internet services,
meaning that it�s basically living in the cloud, always up to date, and you can then
access it using your devices. Once it�s there though, you have multiple
other options of what you can do with that file. For example, you can share that file
with others, meaning that you don�t need to use attachments anymore or you don�t
need to use removable media. That's especially important when you�re dealing with large
files and sending large attachments. It�s also important if you think about the fact
that the file that�s stored online is always the most current one so that if you�re working
with someone else on a project and you�re sending say, Microsoft Word documents back
and forth and you�re not sure you have the latest document that you�re working on,
if you access it from Dropbox it�s always going to be the latest version. I think I�d
better dive in and I can show you how it works. If you visit the Dropbox website, you can
sign up for a free Dropbox account. I think you they include 2 gigabytes of free storage,
which is quite a bit to start and certainly enough for you to get a feel for how it works.
If you invite other people to use Dropbox, they give you additional storage. But once
you use Dropbox for a little while, you�ll end up purchasing more storage and the pricing
amount it right here now. I�ve got like 50 gigabytes so it costs me a fair bit, not
a huge amount of money but it does cost me a little bit. It starts at about $99 per year
per user for the kind of pro version of Dropbox which gives you a tremendous amount of storage.
Once you install Dropbox, you can access it through the web but you also it install it
on your computer. When it installs, it will install it as a Menu bar item that you can
see. So this is where I use Dropbox the most, right up here on my Menu bar. If I click on
that, we�ll see the dropdown Dropbox Menu. Now it shows me two different things. Actually,
this is a new interface that they�ve just incorporated. It shows me the most recently
changed files or the most recently uploaded files. It shows me my Dropbox folder and Dropbox.com.
The Dropbox folder means that�s the folder that resides in my actually hard drive so
we actually have a physical folder on our drive that contains all of our Dropbox items.
That's what Dropbox is going to sync to so you�ve always got a local copy of all of
your documents and you can access that just by clicking on the Dropbox folder and there
are all of my Dropbox folders and files. You can actually if you just take a quick
look here, if we take a step back, I�ve got TextExpander here. What this is this are
all my TextExpander snippets and preferences. I�ve shown you TextExpander in an earlier
video. It�s a tool that allows you to do keyboard shortcuts. This is where it�s stored
so I have the same snippets available on my notebook and on my desktop computer. I use
Dropbox as a syncing tool to sync that device. I also use that to back up all of my accounting
files and all of my photos. As soon as plug my iPhone in to charge, all of my images that
are in it are uploaded to the Camera Uploads for the photos so I've got access to all of
my photos. Are you starting to see where Dropbox can really work well for you?
How do you put a file in Dropbox? I should show you that. Let me grab a file. I�ve
got a screenshot here. I don�t even know what it is. So there�s a file there. If
I want to put that into Dropbox and have that synced to the cloud, I just take that�and
I�m just going to put that here in the root because I don�t really want to keep it�so
there it is. It�s now uploaded so that if I�m on my phone later and I need to access
that file, it�s available to me in Dropbox. It�s that easy to upload files.
Now it gets better because any files that you upload you can start to share with others.
This is one of the most important things that you do. You can set up to share whole folders
if you�re working on projects but for the most part, there�s a default. They create
a Public folder for you within Dropbox and this allows you to quickly share any documents
with anybody else. This one�s already set up for sharing. All you have do to share any
documents, say I want to share this spreadsheet with somebody else, I just click on the document,
I right-click my mouse, and then I can copy the public link. If I copy the public link,
in my clipboard then comes a little URL that people can click on. I can put it into an
email without attaching the document and then people just click on that link and they can
download the document. It�s very, very slick. Now one thing you do need to understand is
the difference between the Dropbox app in the folder that you have locally and Dropbox.com.
So let�s just sign in to Dropbox.com because that is where you actually will do some of
your other management tasks. When I open my Dropbox account here, we can see all of the
exact same folders that are available to me within Dropbox right here. They�re all synced
to my desktop computer and to my notebook computer and I can access them on my phone
and my iPad, my android tablet, and Blackberry as well. They�re all here.
But if you�re setting up to do a project, you�re working with somebody else and you�re
going to want to share a whole folder rather than sharing each individual file, this is
where you set up for sharing. Let�s say I wanted work on this BCIT document with somebody
else. I can set up to share it by right-clicking on it, invite people to the folder, and then
I just invite other people by typing in their email address, and then share the folder with
them. When they accept the sharing, then they could access that folder and everything that's
contained within it. So that works tremendously for when you�re working on projects together.
As I was mentioning earlier, the problem with sending email attachments back and forth with
documents is you�re never sure if you�re working on the most current version of that
document. If you store it online, you�re always editing the most current version. That
is absolutely brilliant. The last huge feature of Dropbox is the security
feature, the fact that you�re backing up your data automatically. So if you think about
Dropbox, first of all we�ve got our Dropbox folder with all of our documents on our Local
drive then we have a cloud-based backup on Dropbox�s servers. But then since we�re
syncing to other devices, we have the same files being synced say to our notebook or
to another desktop computer at home if we have one in the office. So you�re getting
some really good backup security by using Dropbox. I think it�s a tremendous tool.
For me, it sets the standard as far as online backup and online file sharing.
I hope that you�ve found this video useful. If you have, please give us a Like. We always
appreciate the support. I�m Steve Dotto. We�ll see you soon.
[END OF AUDIO] Steve Dotto0Dropbox: Everything You Need to
Know0June 25, 2013
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