By Heather Hamilton, contributing writer
For people who may not deal with technology every day, the idea of sharing their important documents via the cloud can seem overwhelming or confusing. You may work with these people, be related to these people, or otherwise encounter these people in your day-to-day life. If you need to share files with them, you aren’t without options, even if they refuse to participate in cloud-based file sharing. For times when files exceed the capacities of email, look into these options.
Image source: morguefile.com.
Working in Dropbox
While having a Dropbox account has its advantages, you can share a link to a file or folder with someone despite their account status by creating a link. Anyone with the link can view the folder, and, if you have a Premium account, you can password-protect your link and give it an expiration date in Link settings.
A tool called Box
Though the name can throw people off, Box is different than Dropbox. To share a file in this service, you’ll also just right-click and select Sharing and then Share link. In this program, you can also adjust the type of access that users receive for both account holders and those with a shareable link. Like Dropbox, premium users will have added functionality, including being able to track how many times a link has been clicked on and how frequently a file has been downloaded.
If you’re interested in tracking how often a link has been clicked on in either Dropbox or Google Docs, you can use a URL shortener to shorten the link before sharing it. Programs like Bitly can give you that data.
The power of Google Drive
A lot of people work in Google Drive, and this can be a great option for you. By right-clicking on a file or folder, you’ll generate a link that you can share. Within Sharing settings, you can determine how people can be involved with a file — can they edit, comment, or view it? If you want, you can even make a file public so that someone could find it in a Google search. You can make changes to the privacy settings on your documents at any time.
If you don’t have an account
If you don’t have an account and you’re the person doing the sharing, there are options for you, too. Sunshine, Send Anywhere, We Transfer, and Android Beam are four applications identified by Make Use Of to easily transfer large files by temporarily putting them on the cloud.
There are also paid services available to users that circumvent the cloud, but there’s a cost associated with them.
Go old school
Of course, there are plenty of ways to transfer a file if you’re in close proximity to the person with whom you’re sharing. A USB flash drive is easy to use, affordable, and very common. Most have high storage limits and serve your purposes well. You might also adjust file size to utilize email, print documents to share hard copies, or, if you want to get really old school, burn something to a CD.
Ultimately, file sharing via the cloud or another online file-sharing service is easy and should be utilized for maximum productivity.
Sources: Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Make Use Of
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