How can I share a folder with an individual without them being added as a member to our organizations Dropbox account? I want to be able to share a folder without them being added to our team as we would then have to pay for eavh folder shared.
Thanks Rich. Dropbox support just helped me work this out. I shared the folder as normal, but apparently the way Dropbox formats emails to the recipients (or some part of the "accepting the share" process) encourages the recipient to click "join this team" (or something similar). So I end up getting an email saying "XYZ wants to join your team"; and when I go to the admin console, it says "invite pending review; you need one additional licence". It's very misleading, making me think I need to add a new licence so that the sharee can view the shared folder.
I've had this with other clients whom I send public links to (rather than try to share a folder with); I end up getting emails saying they want to join my team. So Dropbox Support brought my attention to the feature that lets you turn it off:
Halleluiah!
Hi @yfranco, thanks for messaging the Community!
You can share folders by following these steps.
You might need to amend your team's sharing settings to allow non-team members to add shared folders.
If you have any further queries, feel free to message back.
It is absolutely bonkers how difficult it is to do this. I'm a PhD and I can't decipher those instructions. Isn't this Dropbox's core function? When and WHY did this become so hard?
@HypotheticalJason wrote: It is absolutely bonkers how difficult it is to do this. I'm a PhD and I can't decipher those instructions. Isn't this Dropbox's core function? When and WHY did this become so hard?
Perhaps if you explained the issue you're having someone might be able to provide assistance.
And remember, if you're trying to share outside of your Business team and you're unable to do so, the team admin may have that ability disabled for the team. If you're the team admin, you can modify these settings.
Hi Jay, I have the same request as the original post. Your link on how to share folders doesn't seem to elaborate on how to do so without triggering the requirement to add the sharee as a paid team member. If it's not possible, it would be good to get that clarified.
asfsfsgweffsd wrote: Your link on how to share folders doesn't seem to elaborate on how to do so without triggering the requirement to add the sharee as a paid team member.
Your link on how to share folders doesn't seem to elaborate on how to do so without triggering the requirement to add the sharee as a paid team member.
That's because the simple act of sharing a folder doesn't add the person as a paid team member. The person would need to be invited as a team member for that to happen.
If you're not able to invite an external user to a shared folder that's in a Team account, then the team admin might have that ability disabled in the team's sharing settings.
Hi all,I keep having same issue with not being able to share a subdirectory in a Team folder to an external person.I have admin console/settings/sharing/direct sharing/sharing externally set to 'On (anyone)'.However, the folder itself shows that folder membership is restricted to team members only (see below) and the dropdown is greyed out - i cannot change it. So no matter what i do, i cannot add an external users email address to the folder as it always gives me the error 'this email isn't in your team'.How do i change this greyed-out setting?Much appreciate any help here - i seem to be going around in circles with whatever i find online or in the dropbox help.Koen
Hey @Koen W., thanks for reaching out to us today.
Is the behavior on the screenshots what you see when trying to share the folder from your "all files" page?
Can you try from the "content" tab in your admin console, to see if you can change the sharing settings and share the folder from there?
Hi Hannah,
Thank you for taking interest in my issue. Yes - it is from the admin console / content page. Very odd, and external sharing is enabled already... Koen
I see, thanks for the update, Koen, pretty odd indeed.
Would you mind sending me a screenshot of your sharing settings in the admin console?
Also, if you try sharing the folder from the all files page instead, do you get the same behavior?
Sure,Below are the screenshots. The first one is the sharing settings, the second one shows the folder settings from admin console/content/.../manage access. The issue seems to be that folder membership cannot be changed (set to 'team members only' and greyed out). If i cannot allow folder membership to anyone but the team, then obviously that will stop me sharing it to external customers.The fact that this setting is greyed out seems to be at odds with the Sharing setting in the admin console. Very much feels like a bug to me, although there might be something I am overlooking.Sharing from the 'all files' page makes no difference - i cannot share to people outside the team, and as per above, I am not allowed to change folder membership to anyone but the team....Thanks for your help so far,
Koen
Hi from me too, Koen! As a test, can you create one more folder in the same directory as the “Test folder” and let me know if you're unable to change its permissions, as well?
Feel free to do this via a different browser too, so that we can isolate the issue a bit more.
Hi Nancy,
I used Google Chrome this time instead of Edge, and created a second folder. Symptoms remain unchanged unfortunately.
It really seems like a bug, doesn't it? I mean, what other setting could there possibly be?
Regards,
Hi again, Koen! I can see that there was already a ticket logged for this, and it appears that the issue has now been addressed. That said, if I've misunderstood the case, don't hesitate to let me know.
Yes - it now has been resolved. I wanted to just leave the solution here, in case anyone else runs into this issue.It turns out that there are sharing restrictions that you can implement on groups of people. Personally I belong to multiple groups and certain groups had restrictions on sharing - I was unaware of it, and it was probably done unintentionally. Anyway, if you belong to even just one group that has restricted sharing rules, you cannot share any folder - even folders that are not linked to groups with sharing restrictions. Once we removed the sharing restrictions on each of the affected groups, the problem was resolved.
Best regards
Hey @Koen W., happy Monday!
Thanks for sharing more updates about the case!
If you need something else, please let me know and I will be more than happy to help every step of the way. Wishing you a great week ahead. 😇
