This afternoon, I was in Windows Explorer and tried as I have many times before to create a link to share a file. However, the option to create a link was no longer available. After restarting my computer and having the same experience, I logged in using my web browser and found that I couldn't create a shared link from there either.
I then contacted Support and they had me restart Dropbox, etc., but nothing restored the create a shared link option.
While online with Support on my Windows machine, I logged in to Dropbox using my MacBook's web browser, and saw the following message: "Sharing for backed up files is going away". Their explanation was that "To help prevent accidental sharing, we've removed the option to share files directly from backup." They then went on to say that "You can still share with others by dragging files into your dropbox.com folder."
This is totally ridiculous, as one of the reasons I signed up for Dropbox is the ability to directly share files from Windows Explorer (or Finder in the macOS). With that removed, Dropbox isn't that different from iDrive, where you create a shared folder and use that to share documents (iDrive is what I left to join Dropbox).
It should be up to the user how and where they want to share files. If I accidently share a file, that is my problem, and taking that option away to protect people from doing so makes this service far less than it was when I signed up.
I also just paid for a full year's subscription about 6 weeks ago and inquired as to whether or not I could get a partial refund since the current service is NOT what I signed up for. As you could imagine, the response was "No".
I urge everyone who is having this issue to flood Support to get Dropbox to reverse this stupid decision. In the meantime, I I'll be evaluating other options to see if there's anything that can give me what I'm looking for.
