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Hiding unshared Team folders from non-member Team members

I'm setting up a new Team Folder. Previously, users only saw the folders that they had access to. Now, all folders are listed. Those that they don't have permission to see are showing up with a Folder/Building/- symbol indicating that they don't have permission to see what's in those folders.

I don't want unshared folders to be visible to everyone. Some of these folders are top-level company members only. I know this has been addressed in the past and at that time the only workaround was to set up all of the folders in your Personal Team Member folder. I am really hoping that there has been a change in the parameters since this post was made and resolved.

https://www.dropboxforum.com/t5/Security-and-Permissions/Creating-locked-folders-that-are-invisible-to-rest-of-your-team/td-p/269177

This option seems like it would be an essential option everyone needs. Does one really need everyone on the team to know that there's a folder for Company Payroll or Payroll Review? or even as basic as Accounting? In my experience, people only want to see in the folders that they know the name of but yet don't have access to.

I'm doing a Dropbox cutover this weekend and just discovered this issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!! The worst case is that I set them all up under my personal folder now and move them out if I find out that there's a better resolution out there.

Thanks, community!!!

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Accepted answers

Megan

Hi @WVU90SAM, thanks for posting here today!

I'm afraid that the same behavior remains now. The Team folder would be visible, it would just show as a locked folder. What you could do, is what you already mentioned: move the content under your personal folder.

Your feedback regarding this has been very valuable and I will endeavor to make sure your voice is heard.

If you need anything else, let me know!

All comments

Megan

Hi @WVU90SAM, thanks for posting here today!

Your feedback regarding this has been very valuable and I will endeavor to make sure your voice is heard.

If you need anything else, let me know!

SimonAberg

Hi,

I have the exact same issue.

I just did some well needed file organization and sorting this weekend, and consolidated company administration files in dropbox. I was careful to set the sharing options so only the right people got access to what they needed. Now this morning I get questions from all the team members about the folders that they can see but don't access. I have looked everywhere to try to hide them, but id does not seem possible.

Please address this problem.

Best regards,

Simon

WVU90SAM

@SimonAberg

Exactly! I had to set up all of the folders under my folder and share them accordingly so that no one can see the unshared folders. I can't believe that this is still an issue -- especially when it wasn't before.

Dropbox, please fix this. @Megan

nada_dbx

Hi, Dropbox product team member here. We're working on an update of the Team Space experience and I hear your feedback. We want to make it so that Team Folders are invisible to the team members they are not shared with. Part of that work is understanding how much to expose when members have access somewhere down the tree. For example, if there is a Team Folder structure like Accounting/Payroll/2023/Market Research, and you give a team member access directly to the Market Research folder. How would you say their Dropbox view should look:

1. With the full path of the folder exposed: Accounting/Payroll/2023/Market Research so that they understand where the folder exists and how to navigate to it

2. With only /Market Research visible so they have no exposure to which folder it lives in.

Would love to hear your thoughts!

WVU90SAM

It's great to hear that you all are exploring a solution.

While I try to not share any subfolders as a general practice (because I don't want to memorize who has access to each of the subfolders), if I were to share a subfolder, I would only want the person to see the part of the path that they have access to. So, option 2. With only /Market Research visible so they have no exposure to which folder it lives in.

Thanks!

SimonAberg

Hi,

I see that this is not so simple. For a small organization I think option 2 would be quite simple and straight forward. But as soon as you start sharing more subfolders under the same parent folder it will be very hard for the user to keep things organized if the folders show up without parents. A related scenario that I need most is to unshare/hide subfolders. Example: The hole team have access to Accounting/ and all the subfolders in there, but the folder Accounting/payroll/ is hidden/unshared for everyone except of a few. This could only be achieved with Option 1 so I vote for that!

georgii

Hi, i have the same issue with my team folders, all members see entirely space. It is so distracting. Solution to organize folder structure for shared subfolder only with a full path (Option2). These way it would be much easier to maintain apps that are connected to folders or files with specific full path of the content in different local computers. Thank you Dropbox starting to work on that issue)

georgii

Sorry Option 1 I meant)

MacIndy

This is very basic folder security that I have been able to do in the Microsoft world for a few decades. For businesses with alot of content its an essential feature.

pconnell

I'm also interested in the functionality of hiding folders that a user doesn't have access to. Many top-level folders aren't appropriate for our entire team. From a purely organizational perspective, nesting top-level files within another (personal) file is counter-intuitive and counter-productive. We recently switched to Dropbox for our rapidly growing team, and this issue is a significant one that I hope gets resolved quickly.

I'm happy to see that the Dropbox team is actively looking into addressing the issue. For the above, I prefer option 1 to show a user the subfolder origin.

MCC61

Hi wondering if there has been any further progress on this.

Our structure has enabled us to create multiple teams, and different teams having access to the folders necessary, however we really need people not to see the folders they dont have access for. I need to reduce clutter for certain teams as well as keep information confidential

nada_dbx

Hi I'd like to provide an update here - We've moved forward with option 1 that I mentioned before, providing the parent folder structure visibility to enable team members to see the full path of only folders they have access to, and hiding any folders they do not have access to. All new team plans being created will have this update by default. And we are rolling out the update to existing teams over the next few months. The team admins will get an email ahead of the update so they know when they will get it. Again, thank you for the feedback!

SimonAberg

This is great news! Thank you dropbox team for this. I really hope we are among the first in line for the rollout. 😉

Marian C.7

I am interested to see how this works. It may be that we have our business team structure set up differently in that we have created multiple teams i.e Management, Directors, Administration - and then there are cross overs where some members of each of those teams form a new team i.e Marketing. In my case it is the source team folder I dont want cluttering the space.

I am not sure that is what option 1 will achieve, but am keeping a very open mind.

Teamownerali

Hi Nada - I’ve read this thread for a few years ago but having just set up my teams and all the permissions this isn’t the case for me. All folders without access are showing with the no access symbol. How do I activate the option for these to be hidden?

Walter

Hey @Teamownerali - sorry to hear you're having issues with this.

Could you send us a screenshot of what's troubling you (omitting any personal information) so that we can make sure we're on the same page?

Teamownerali

Thanks Walter. Our users are spilt into teams, the sub team has limited access to some folders, and some sub folders. However all the folders they don't have access to still show. According to the updates in this thread, folders they do not have access to should be hidden? They see they the below view, with zero access folders listed but greyed out

Screenshot 2024-03-28 203900.png

Nancy

Hey @Teamownerali, sorry to jump in here.

All new teams should indeed have this update enabled automatically.

However, since we can’t see account info on the forum to fully understand why you’re not seeing this, I’d suggest getting in touch with our support team, so that they can investigate further and check details of your Dropbox account.

Feel free to send us your ticket number here, if you want, and we can leave an internal note to our team as well.