- Some tools have kind of become old friends to me,
and Dropbox is one of those tools.
I've been using it for as long as I can remember.
Now today on DottoTech, I thought I'd share with you
some of the secrets that I have found
to mastering Dropbox.
(funky rock music)
- Steve Dotto here, how the heck you doing this fine day?
At DottoTech, we make technology easy so you can do more.
As I mentioned off the top, Dropbox is our topic du jour,
and I'm gonna show you some of the more cool features
that Dropbox has that I believe a lot of people aren't aware
are in the file sharing tool.
Now to be fair, there's a lot
of good file sharing utilities out there.
We use Google Drive a lot.
There is Box.
There's so many other good file sharing tools,
but Dropbox is the one that I've been using the longest.
It's the one I'm most comfortable with,
and I think if you master it the way that we've mastered it,
it'll become an old friend to you as well.
Before we begin though, I would like to let you know
that today's sponsor on DottoTech is Thinkific.
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Simply put, Thinkific is where we host
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Now, before we begin, I'd like to give you
kind of an overview of how Dropbox works.
Dropbox, essentially, is a cloud service,
where we store all of the files that we want to share
across multiple devices.
Now, the challenge with sharing files
across multiple devices is managing the versions.
And how Dropbox takes care of that
is when you put a file in your Dropbox folder
on your local hard drive, it syncs
that version of the file with the cloud service,
and in turn it syncs the cloud service
with any other instances of Dropbox
that you have installed on your other computers.
So your desktop computer and your notebook computer
will always be in sync.
Now the fact that we have a cloud-based version
of the file as well as the local versions
on our hard drives means that we can
also share that file with other people
and allow, it's a great way for us
to transfer, especially large files
to coworkers or team members or customers
if we choose to share that way.
Now, there are some subtleties
that even make Dropbox better.
For example, if you wanna have only
the online version of the file
stored in the cloud, and you don't wanna
be cluttering up your local hard drives
with large files, you can set up Dropbox
so that the files are stored in the cloud.
And you just have a link to be able
to open them on your computer, but they don't live
on your computer until you want them.
But that's getting a little bit more sophisticated.
But we will touch on how to do some of those things
a little bit later in this video.
So that's kind of how Dropbox works overall.
Let's take a look at some of the advanced features
or some of the what I think are more secret features
of the ways that people can master Dropbox
for their own use.
And the first way is if you are a Gmail user,
oh my gosh, there is a wonderful Chrome extension
that really integrates Dropbox nicely with Gmail.
While I show you this, while I get this set up,
I should mention, one of the really nice things
about Dropbox besides all of the things
I was just talking about, is how well
it integrates with other tools.
Gmail, which I'm about to show you,
is just one of the tools.
We integrate it with Asana.
We integrate it with Slack.
We integrate with all of our productivity tools.
So that's one of the really nice features
that's built into Dropbox.
Now, if you want to use Dropbox with Gmail,
go into the Chrome Web Store and find this extension.
It's called Dropbox for Gmail.
Once you've installed that extension,
this will happen to your New Message window in Gmail
is down here in the bottom, you will have access
to be able to add files using Dropbox.
By clicking on this, you can incorporate
any file that's in Dropbox into a Gmail
that you're sending to somebody else.
So this is a terrific way for you to instantly share files.
You don't have to go to Dropbox
and copy the link and paste the link
and do all of those steps, but instead
it's integrated here right within the Gmail window.
This is a huge time saver.
Unfortunately, it's only great if you use Chrome and Gmail,
but many of us do that.
So that's a great fit for us right there,
integrating Dropbox directly into Gmail.
Now the next thing I wanna talk about is
something called selective sync.
Now, selective sync is that situation
that I was talking about a few moments ago
where you might have some large files
that you store in Dropbox.
But you have smaller hard drives on your notebook
or on your desktop computer, and you don't necessarily
wanna have those large files resident
on all of those computers at all time.
I've got that situation with my notebook.
If we go into my Dropbox account here,
now here we're going into Dropbox
and we're taking a look at all of the files that I have
in Dropbox, and I've got a folder here called Video.
This, actually, I'll call up the info on this folder
just so you can see it.
This is a massive folder.
Right now, we have 225 or so gigabytes
of data in this folder.
This is where we store all of the videos
that we're editing for our YouTube channel.
As soon as I'm finished with this video here today,
I'll be uploading it into Dropbox
so that Liz can edit it, and so this video
in its rough form will soon be residing in that folder.
Now, the last thing I need is for that folder
to also be on my notebook computer.
Now, occasionally I might need to access
the files on my notebook, but my notebook
has a smaller hard drive.
I don't want these files living there at all times,
so here's how you set up something
called selective sync, which will allow you
to determine which folders sync on which devices.
This is Dropbox gold.
You go on the gear menu into Preferences.
In Preferences, you go into the Sync menu
and there you choose the folders that you want to sync.
You have selective sync.
Open this up, and on each device,
you can choose exactly which of your Dropbox folders
you want to sync.
In other words, you wanna have all of the data
from that folder stored locally on your hard drive here
so you can have access to it when you're offline.
So one my notebook computer, for example,
I have this checked off.
Now the plus is that I don't have 226 gigabytes
of videos clogging up that hard drive.
The downside is, if I'm not online,
I don't have access to those files.
If I'm online, I do have access,
but I would have to download those large files
to my local computer if I wanted to work on them.
So you've got that issue, but that to me, excuse me,
that to me, selective sync,
is one of the most crucial skills
that you need to learn in order to really master
Dropbox on your local system.
The next thing I wanna talk about is
the quick sharing features,
how quick and easy it is to share a file
with other people using Dropbox.
And this, all you do is, any file that you have
in your Dropbox folder.
Let's go into my Speaking file here.
And here's all of my presentations.
If I wanna quickly share this talk
that I'm working on right now with somebody else,
I just right-click the mouse, and I can choose Share
or even better, choose the Copy Dropbox Link.
If I copy this Dropbox link, it then drops
into my clipboard a URL that I can then email
to anybody else that will allow them to download that file.
It's the easiest, quickest way to share files
that's built right into Dropbox.
Now, you might have noticed there's a,
when I did that, when I right-clicked the mouse.
Let me do it again.
Let me right-click my mouse on this again,
you'll see that there are
some other options besides sharing.
We can view the file on Dropbox.com.
What that means is we're seeing it
in the web browser instead of in the utility,
and we'll be looking at the web browser
in a few moments because we can do some other things
in the web browser version of Dropbox
that add some pretty cool features.
But this is the one I wanted to show you, Version History.
This is very cool.
This could be a huge time saver
for you at some point in your life.
Dropbox saves a discrete version
of each of the documents that you save.
So if you save multiple versions of a document,
you actually have a version history
of that document in Dropbox.
And if we go, let me take a look.
Let me grab something that I know I've got.
Here, this one here.
If I go to this particular slide deck here,
and I go open Version History,
you will see it actually opens this in a web browser.
So it's opening the browser-based version of Dropbox,
but what we see here is the version history
for that document.
So if for some reason, you know how
sometimes you save a document,
and then realize you really needed
an earlier version of that document?
This can be a massive savior for you
because you can go back to the earlier versions
of this document that you've saved on Dropbox
and access that version, ooh, (snaps) good one.
That is a very, very good thing.
While we are in the browser version of Dropbox,
there's some additional features here
that I wanna show you about.
The first one is this one here called File Requests,
which is a very simple, very subtle way of using Dropbox.
Most of time, we think about taking a large file,
uploading it to Dropbox, sharing that link
with somebody else so they can download a large file.
And it works great that way.
It's a great way to transfer large files
and manage large files within your enterprise.
But sometimes, there's somebody from outside
who wants to send you a large file,
but they don't necessarily have the technical ability
to understand how to send a large file to you.
You can, by clicking here on File Requests,
create a custom link that you can send to them
which they can then upload any file
on their computer to your Dropbox account
with just a single click of the mouse.
It's actually kind of genius if you think about it.
It's called Requested Files.
And what you do is to request a file,
you click on Request File,
you mention what you're requesting.
It creates a folder in your Dropbox account,
and then what it will do, I'm requesting Good Stuff.
You click Next.
It then creates this link.
This link, if they go to this link in their browser,
what they will see is this.
Please choose a file from your computer and upload it
to Steve Dotto's Dropbox account.
How cool is that?
Now think about the people in your life
that are technically challenged
that might need to send you large files at some point.
This is the way that you can make it very easy for them
to send you a large file without them having to worry
about compressing the file and finding
a large file transfer tool and all of those sorts of things.
Instead, they can just upload this to your Dropbox folder,
where you can deal with it,
making their life easy and thereby making your life easy.
Now, while we are on the web app,
we also there have the ability to go in and manage
all of the different sharing of different folders.
So if we take a look at this Video folder
which is what we use for recording and editing
all of our videos, if I click on the little three dots
over here on this side, I can go in,
and I can manage all of the different sharing options,
who has access to the folders, and what they can do.
So we can actually manage whether or not
they can view or whether they can edit the documents
that are stored in that folder.
So this is our basic file sharing control panel,
and for a lot of people, they get a little bit confused.
They think they should be able to manage
all of the sharing from the app itself,
or from the extension in their computer,
but in reality, it's far better to do it right here
from the browser version of Dropbox.
Now the last thing that I wanna talk to you about
and might be the most valuable thing
that I'm gonna show you today.
Encourage you to go into the Dropbox utility
on your computer, click on the gear setting,
go into the Preferences, and go through each
of the different settings that they have available to us.
There you'll learn that you can do things
like manage all of your photos, have Dropbox upload
all photos that you have on your computer
or on your phone or on your camera,
and store them for you, which is a great way
if you don't use another photo backup service
to backup and manage all of your photos.
But I want you to go into the Sync menu one more time,
because down here at the very bottom of the Sync
is Dropbox Folder Location.
I found this to be invaluable.
This allows you to determine a different hard drive
or a different storage location for your Dropbox folder
on each computer.
So if you have multiple drives like I do
on my desktop system here, I can move
my Dropbox storage folder, which is up to like a terabyte
in size, that's how much storage I have online,
I can move it to a different drive
than my normal startup folder
so that I don't clog it up all of the time.
All you do is select a Dropbox location here,
and this will allow you to then choose
from all of the assets you have available.
Here's all of my drives.
I can choose to have Dropbox live on any of these drives.
Now, this, as I say, it frees up space
on your startup disk and allows you to manage
your assets that much more elegantly.
This to me was a really big deal,
being able to move all of my Dropbox folders
off of my startup drive.
Now, the reason, just in case you're curious,
is I have an SSD startup drive.
I only have a 256 gigabyte startup drive, my boot drive,
so that all of my apps and my operating system live on that,
makes my computer very fast,
but not a lot of storage on that drive,
and Dropbox would quickly fill up that drive.
You can imagine.
So by moving it off onto one of our hard disks,
I am then able to far more efficiently manage
all of my different folders. (funky jazz music)
That's what I'm talking about
when I'm talking about mastering Dropbox.
Now, Dropbox, as I say, is one of several different tools.
Each one has their own personality
as far as online file sharing and file storage.
It's the kind of the old friend for me,
and maybe now, if you take advantage
of a few of tips that I'm talking about today,
it'll become an old friend for you as well.
(gun clicking and firing)
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Til next time, I'm Steve Dotto.
Have fun storming the castle!