How to access a shared file from the Dropbox app rather than online?

Question

Hi,

I work within the finance department and we would like to give access to specific individual files(not entire folder) to different sales consultants of different teams. After we gave the access, they could find these files when they login to dropbox online & navigate to 'files' within 'Shared'. But this is not appearing within the dropbox folder in the system. Only the shared folders are showing up in the file explorer within dropbox folder.

Could someone please look into this and advise what would be the best solution? Is there any way in which they can access shared file as well through system rather than logging into online dropbox account?

Kind regards,

Arun

Hannah · Answer

Hey Arun, indeed, it would be a move and not a copy of the files.

That's because with a copy, the edits made to the original file would not sync to the copy, so you'd have to update both the original and the copy each time.

If you have no problem doing that, you can go for a copy.

Since shared individual files can only be accessed from the shared tab on our website, I can't think of any other way around this.

I hope this clarifies things, though, and if you have any other questions, please let us know.

Arun Kalluparampil · Answer

Hello Hannah,

Thank you so much for your response.

I would like to give a bit more insights about our scenario. We have got a main finance folder with different subfolders. Each subfolder has got heaps of files relevant for different teams. Obviously, the reason why we can't share the existing subfolder as it is due to the confidentiality. When we share any individual file to a team leader, then he/she needs to login online to access the file, which is a bit difficult.

Now if we adopt what you recommended, I have got couple of queries :

1.If we add files from our finance subfolder to their newly created folders under their name for sharing, are you referring about completing moving to the folder or a copy? I believe it would be about moving. Different excel files within our finance folder are connected or linked to each other. If we move out one of those files to a new destination, I afraid it would cause issues to the main excel file.

2. So we wish to retain at where it is located if it causes the problem mentioned above.  Also, we are concerned about working together on a file. The main functionality with dropbox that we enjoy is that we can see the changes and it gets updated.

Please advise whether my understanding is correct or not. If it is correct, would there be another way around in this scenario?

Kind regards, Arun

Hannah · Answer

Hey @Arun Kalluparampil, thanks for posting your question to our Community.

I'm afraid this is not possible with individual files.

As a workaround, you can create different folders with each consultant's name, for example, then share the folders with them and add the files they each need to access in the folders.

I hope this helps, but let me know if you have any questions!