Hey everyone. Welcome to another episode of Smooth Sailing Online Support TV. I’m Lyndsay Phillips, your host and Captain for this little video. Today I want to talk to you about using Dropbox. There’s a lot of people that use it, but they don’t really understand all of its functions or how to share files, instead of uploading massive files and sending it through an email. I thought I would dive in and show you some of it, the key features it has, because it really is super useful. I use it every day. I’m going to share my screen and talk while we check out my own Dropbox.
Using Dropbox to be More Productive
The Basics Of Using Dropbox To Increase Efficiency
There are folders in folders in folders, so to speak, and this of course is mine for some of my own business stuff. You can see it here there’s a bunch of files in there. There are no sub-folders, but you can certainly click “Add New Folder” to create sub-folders in here and sub-categorize. It’s so much easier to find things, instead of going through all these files.
What I’m going to do is set up a blog so, I should probably do this anyway, to kind of get more organized, to put in here ones that I have already loaded. You’ll see, there’s a file.
You can move files into those sub-folders in a couple of ways. One is, you can kind of highlight it and you can actually go move. However, that’s kind of painful, actually, because you have to find the folder, then click the sub-folder, and so on, and so on, until you find the one you want. I just find it easier to just drag and drop. Sometimes it takes a couple seconds to move it.
There we go. If I open this one, you’ll see this folder is here. You probably saw that little pop-up down there. Right? That is because I have Dropbox. It’s kind of hard to explain, but you download it as if it’s your hard drive. That way I don’t have to open up a file, make some edits, and then re-upload it into Dropbox. It automatically saves. It looks like it’s saving onto my hard drive, but in actuality, it’s updating Dropbox in live time, so that I can access it anywhere on the web, so to speak.
We’ve got this document here. It’s an old blog of mine. You can open it up and share it. You’ll see it here. This is more like, it’s viewing. Then, I’ll have to move here. You’ll see here, you can either open it in Word, you can show it in files, so you can download it for whatever you may need. There is a button that says, “Download.” This is the sharing function, so you can share within that document itself. I’m going to close that off. I find it easier to share when you just see the actual file and the file name.
You can just share a link. If you go create a link. Copy a link. Then, you just copy in that. Then, I will open up a WordPad here, and then you’ll just see what it looks like. That is a linkable or clickable link that you can put in someone’s email address. Let’s say you have an opt-in, and some of the files are really big that you want to share in the thank you email, or the thank you page. You can easily use a Dropbox file. Super handy for bigger files, videos, that kind of thing. I’m going to move back again.
The other option for sharing is … Let’s say you want to share with one of your team members, the whole entire file folder, of all the documents. Let’s say I want one of my staff to access all of the blogs that I’ve ever written for, pulling social media posts out of it, let’s say. I would, for instance, take that whole folder. Let’s say I had them all moved in there. I would hit “Share” and then I can enter their name.
There’s Lynn, for instance. That way they have a link. They’ll get an email, so they can access that folder and everything in that folder. If I then move other documents into that folder, they automatically have access. You can, of course, go to this whole sharing section and update or edit what you’re sharing with who.
Let’s say I have a member of my team that is no longer working on that particular client’s project, I can then remove them from being shared into that specific folder. You can see here, it’s got all of the, who is sharing what with who. That way, you can manage it there.
The biggest thing that people do is click that “share” link and share it with people. It’s so much easier than downloading it, uploading a file to the email and sending it. It’s easy for me and my team as well, to share those files, especially if they’re audio files, into my project management tool. All I need to do in Teamworks is add that Dropbox link. I hope that is super helpful for you guys. By all means, email me any questions you have about any of the tools that I’ve mentioned on how to maximize and make your business more efficient.
You can reach me at info, or captain, of course @ssonlinesupport.com. You can find this video and other videos at LyndsayPhillips.com, along with my blogs and my podcasts, Sailing to Success podcast show. Of course, my services right here.
Until next week folks, have a productive and profitable week, and may the winds always be at your back.
