HOW TO

Everything you need to know about Dropbox for Windows

1

DOWNLOAD THE APP Firstly, go to dropbox.com to download and install the desktop app. There is also an app in the Windows Store, but it’s more like the mobile version of the app and doesn’t do the file synchronisation we want to show here. You may be prompted to buy a Dropbox plan (above) but you don’t need to do that. You also don’t need to set up an account until the next stage.

2

SIGN INTO THE APP You will need to sign into the app to ‘link’ it to a Dropbox account. Don’t have a Dropbox account? Then you can sign up at the bottom of this window. You can also use Google to sign into the app should you have an existing Google account. Creating a Dropbox account is a really simple process and the app won’t ask you for extra details it doesn’t really need.

3

SELECTIVE FOLDERS You can either choose to sync everything to your computer from your Dropbox or use what’s called Selective sync. With this you choose which Dropbox folders to synchronise with this particular PC. With new Dropboxes this won’t be a problem, but we’re demonstrating this with a (nearly full!) Dropbox to show you how everything works as it wouldn’t be much good if we had no examples!

4

SHARE SCREENSHOTS When you start up Dropbox for the first time you’ll get this prompt. It asks if you want Dropbox to manage screenshots is you take them – this can be useful as they’ll pop into a Screenshots folder in your Dropbox and sync right away. Similarly you can ask Dropbox to instantly take photos from cameras you plug into Windows and it’ll prompt you about the new device.

5

THE DROPBOX FOLDER This is the key window of Dropbox – the local (on your PC) folder that shows everything that’s currently in your Dropbox. As you can see, Dropbox overlays icons – these blue spinning icons indicate synchronisation taking place. A green tick means that file has been synchronised. Dropbox updates in real time, so if a file is edited somewhere else, the change will be reflected right away.

6

SHARING FILES You can share files from just about anywhere in Dropbox – here’s how to share in Windows. Right-click a file and go to Share alongside the Dropbox icon. You’ll then see this rather plain window which enables you to write a message and say where the file is going – add an email address. You can also share by copying a Dropbox link that you can send in other ways, like in a text.

7

THE APP MENU Finally we see the Dropbox app! It sits in your notifications area looking like it’s doing nothing. In fact, it’s keeping an eye on your files and making sure they synchronise. Clicking on the Dropbox icon brings up this menu – it shows you all the recently edited and synchronised files and when they were modified. This menu will also show you any notifications you need.

8

FOR YOU The For You menu here looks a little blank, but it’ll populate with tailored access to files you use often. Here it’s showing our Current Work folder which is one of our most-used folders. Note that synchronisation is taking place here – you can see progress at the very bottom of the window where Dropbox will tell you how many files there are left to process.

9

SEARCH FOR ANYTHING At the top of the app menu is a search bar. As well as names and icons, Dropbox will also show you other file information, such as size and when it was last edited. You can also see where in your Dropbox the file is stored – you might have a January.xlsx in a 2019 folder, but also one in 2018 and 2017, too. The ‘link’ icon gets you a link to the selected file directly from this window.

10

MANAGING FILES There are stacks of other file management options in the main Dropbox menu. Select a recently uploaded bunch of files and you can unfurl the bundle to see each one individually. You can share it, get a link, star it for easy retrieval or open the file. What’s more, you can open it in specific apps – so if you want to send an image to Photoshop, you can do that from here. TL