Using Dropbox to Share Files

Dropbox is a file syncing service. It will sync files amongst multiple devices, like computers and phones, for a given account. Files are stored on dropbox's servers, and are available over the internet. They also have a way to make a file publicly available over the internet. So you can share a file with whoever. This is a good way to share files, like music, with friends.

2GB of storage is free, and there is no limit on file size. So it has a number of advantages over the free yousendit service. Yousendit limits file size to 100MB, and limits the length of time you can share a file to one week.

The public folder is where I like putting files to share on dropbox. To add a file to the public folder, you move into dropbox's public folder on your computer. Once there, it automatically gets synced to dropbox's server in the cloud.

To use the dropbox service, it's recommended you install the dropbox app on your computer (PC or Mac.) There's also an iPhone app too, as well as other apps that will let you view and edit files from dropbox. After you install the app, you'll have a dropbox folder on your computer, on Mac's it's in your user folder. On Mac's, there's also a dropbox icon on your menu bar, where you can open your dropbox folder, and check on the status of uploads.

You can get to the public folder inside your dropbox folder on your computer. Move the file you want to share there. Then right-click on the file to get the URL for that file. See the diagram below to get to "Copy Public Link."




You can now share that URL through an email with friends. The URL is saved on your clipboard and you can paste it into the body of an email. There's also a website interface for the dropbox service where you can upload files directly and get links to your files. So you can access your own stuff even when you're not at a computer with dropbox on it.

To share music you might want to combine multiple songs into one file to make it easier to share. Below I'm pasting some info from a previous post on how to do that on a Mac.

An easy way to combine files into one file is by using the Zip technology built into the Mac OS. Zip is essentially a way to compress files. You can zip a single file or multiple files. Because most types of media, like MP3 or video, are already compressed, zipping the files doesn't actually make them significantly smaller. However you can use Zip to take several files and bundle them together into what Apple calls an Archive. So by taking an album and zipping the songs, we create a copy of the album that exists as one file. This single file (containing multiple songs) can then be uploaded to YouSendIt or dropbox in one go.

So here's an example of how to do this with an album. First find the files that you want to send. It's easy enough to do with iTunes. By right-clickng on a song, use can use the "Show in Finder" command (the third item from the top in the contextual menu.) If your mouse only has one button, then you can hold down the Ctrl button while clicking to get the same contextual menu up.

The "Show in Finder" command will open up a window in the Finder showing where the file of the song is located. So now you see your song along with all the other songs in the album. Now we want to bundle all the files in this album into one single file. To do this, select all the files in the folder, then right-click again. This time you use the "Compress x items" (where x is the number of files that you've selected), the fifth command from the top of the contextual menu.

After you've compressed your files, you'll see a new file in the same folder called "Archive.zip." This is a copy of your files collapsed into a single file.


This file called "Archive.zip" is the file that you want to send with YouSendIt or share with dropbox. You can also compress or zip a folder. If you did this, then the compressed file would be named after the folder and not the generic "Arhive" that is used when you zip or compress multiple files.