Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Dropbox for Windows Tutorial”.
In this tutorial, we’re going to take a look at the cloud storage service called Dropbox and Dropbox was one of the first cloud storage services out there on the Internet, and many people still believe it to be the best. It’S one of my favorites right up there with Microsoft’s onedrive I like both of them about equally, but let’s take a look now at Dropbox and what it can do for you Here. I am at Dropbox comm and, as you can see, it says your stuff anywhere and that’s. The idea here is that you can have a Dropbox on your computer that anything that you put into that Dropbox will be available to you on all of your devices. So, to get set up and ready to use Dropbox, you can go to Dropbox comm and you can click this signup button. However, I really recommend that you sign up a different way.
If you know someone who already has a Dropbox account, you could ask them to send you a link to sign up and if you use their link, you’ll get bonus, storage space and so will they. Now I have set up a link associated with this YouTube video. So if you don’t want to take the time to find a friend that has a Dropbox link, you can just use my link. It’Ll help me get some storage space and it’ll help you. If you want to use that link you’ll.
Just look underneath this YouTube. Video that you’re watching now and you should see on in the published area with information about the video you should see a link now. This is one for a different video that I made but it’ll be similar and you’ll. Just click the link to go and sign up two for Dropbox and you’ll get bonus, storage, and so will I, but if you prefer, you can just go to Dropbox com click, sign up, there’s a few simple questions and you will be signed up to use Dropbox And once you’re signed up, you will be able to sign into Dropbox comm and you will be able to upload items into your storage area notice that I can click this button here to upload.
I simply choose files that are on my computer. Select them click open and it pulls it up into my Dropbox comm account. So now here is that document that I just recently uploaded now. That’S one way that you can use Dropbox just simply open up the internet. Go to Dropbox, calm, upload things that you want to share or be able to access anywhere. You are, and then let’s say I am on a public computer somewhere.
I could just go to Dropbox com login, and here I would see the document that I just barely uploaded and I would be able to download that to the computer simply by clicking on it and then clicking this download button here at the top. Now I can also link to it if I right-click on it, I can click the share link and it gives me a hyperlink that I could email and, as you can see, there’s lots of other options that I have because I have uploaded this into my Dropbox Account so that is a valid way to use Dropbox just using Dropbox comm logging in uploading downloading, as needed and sharing links with people that that might need it now. It honestly, if that’s the way, you’re going to use Dropbox, even though it’s a valid good way to do it. I’M gon na tell you you’re missing out on some of the power and convenience of Dropbox to fully use Dropbox effectively.
What you’re going to want to do is, after signing up click here in the upper right corner on your name and choose install, and this will download Dropbox to your computer setting up for you a folder, a Dropbox. If you will on your computer into which you can put just about any kind of file, and then it will automatically upload it to your Dropbox, comm account and download it to your other computers and make it available on your other devices. Like tablets, smartphones things like that, so here you can see, it says: download Dropbox, your stuff anywhere free download for Windows, and all I have to do is click that, and it says we’re now downloading Dropbox. Now it looks like Internet Explorer prevented me from actually downloading that Dropbox. I don’t believe that it’s downloaded it at all. You can see it didn’t put it on my desktop. You can see if I go here to the Windows Explorer and go to downloads. It’S not there either.
So the reason. Why is because? Because I am in Internet Explorer notice what it says it says: do you want to run or save Dropbox installer from this website and I’m going to say? Yes, I’m going to go ahead and save it, but you could probably just run it and install it that way, but I’m going to save it and it says it downloaded I’ll click view downloads, there’s my Dropbox and dollar and – and I can simply click on it And over here it says, run I’ll click run it initializes, the Dropbox installer, and it’s going to begin to install Dropbox on my computer here. Windows is trying to protect me wants to make sure that I indeed want to install Dropbox. Yes, I do now.
The installer is taking some time to download additional files and things that it will need to install Dropbox. Now Dropbox is just about done installing, but, while its finishing, I don’t need this anymore, this little pop-up here. This is simply a list of the things I’ve downloaded and Dropbox. Is there and I clicked run? I don’t need it anymore, so I’m going to X out of it and notice what happens now that it’s finished installing Dropbox, I get a pop up on the screen and it’s asking for my Dropbox email and password, and this is the same email and password that I set up on the website, Dropbox comm, so I’ll type that in and just click sign-in, and this will link my computer to my Dropbox comm account and it says: congratulations it’s successfully installed and I can click to open my Dropbox folder.
But I want you to look down here in the lower right corner. There is the Dropbox icon, and that is going to be where I go to access my Dropbox files from now on on this Windows computer, I’m just going to X out of that and then I’ll click here on my Dropbox folder notice. What it says Dropbox is starting and it is going to take some time it’s going to try to download all of my files and folders everything that I have on Dropbox comm onto this computer, and that is something that you need to know. You need to know that the files that you have in Dropbox will be downloaded and will take up space both on this computer and on any other computer that I have installed. Dropbox now works a little differently with mobile devices like Android devices, iPads iPhones, smartphones of other kinds. In those cases I can see the documents in the files and I can access them, but they don’t really reside on the devices until I tell them to okay. So you can see here: Dropbox is working to download all of this stuff to this computer and if you look at the icon here in the lower right corner, there’s a spinning circle that indicates that Dropbox is working hard to synchronize the files and and download them Onto this computer, the first time you do this, it’s going to take some time if you have a lot of files online because that it takes a while to download everything to your computer. Now, let’s pretend that it’s done it.
It’S not! But let’s pretend, like all of these files and folders are downloaded to my computer they’re, ready to be used a couple of things that you need to know basically anytime from now on that I want to put something in Dropbox to be accessible in my other devices. All I have to do is go down and click here and then go to Dropbox folder open that up and simply just drag in the things that I want to to be shared and to be taken to those other devices. Also, I can open any of these folders and access the content, and I can also generate links that I can send to people so that they can access these documents. All I have to do is right-click on a document in my Dropbox folder and notice that toward the top here, it says, share Dropbox link and if I click it, it copies a link to this specific document.
And now I can paste that link into an email, send it to someone and they will be able to access just that. One document in my Dropbox: it’s a really great way to send large files. For example, let’s say I have a 20 megabyte file.
I want to send to someone – that’s not huge, but it’s probably too big to email, and so what I could do is just right. Click on the document get that shared Dropbox link copy it paste that into an email and then send it to the person. I want to send a large file to they’ll, be able to click a link and gradually download that file to their computer.
So that’s a wonderful thing about Dropbox now, you’ll notice, the in addition to accessing Dropbox here in the lower right corner, what they call the notification area in addition to that, Dropbox is also now shows up in my list of favorites in the Windows Explorer, and so I can just click here on Dropbox to access it there too and in the future. If I need it again, I could just click there and there. It is in addition to that, though, there’s yet another way to save, to Dropbox or put things in Dropbox, and that is let’s say I’m in Microsoft, Word Excel or PowerPoint or some other program. I can create a document and then save it directly to Dropbox.
That way, I won’t have to click and drag to put it there, I’ll just save directly to it. Okay, so here in word, I could create a document and then click file save or save, as if it’s a document I’ve been already working on and have saved in the past, and I can save it here to desktop I’ll click that, but instead of saving it To desktop I’m going to click and drag this slider up and I’ll choose Dropbox right here, and I could put it inside one of these folders. If I want to – or I could just name it click save and that document now is saved in my Dropbox, which means it’s automatically going to be put into my online files and my online cloud storage in at Dropbox comm. So really, that’s all you need to know to get started using dropbox dropbox is pretty much tied for my favorite cloud storage service. I love Dropbox right up there with onedrive Microsoft’s onedrive. Those are my two favorites and some of you may be thinking. Well. Why do you need to two favorites and you don’t you know? Dropbox is excellent, and if that’s what you want to use, that’s the only one that you need onedrive.
If you love that one, you could just stick with that one, and that’s all that you need, but the thing is Dropbox only gives you two gigabytes of storage for free. If you want more than that, you’re going to have to pay or you can go through the steps to invite others to use Dropbox and then you’ll be able to get bonus storage as well. So the nice thing is, if you have Dropbox and onedrive, it’s basically like doubling your storage online in the cloud. So I think Dropbox is just a great cloud storage service right up there with onedrive. I think they’re both top-notch and I love both and I use both in some ways. Dropbox is superior in that there are more services and apps that tap into Dropbox and lets you save directly to Dropbox. Then there are that lets you save and tap into onedrive and in that way, Dropbox is probably a little bit better even than onedrive, but I like onedrive. For other reasons, it gives you more storage and it works excellently on Windows, computers, but it also works well on Macs, so I hope that you’ll try out Dropbox and, if you’re interested, I hope, you’ll check out my video on onedrive as well. Please subscribe to my youtube channel to learn more about technology in the classroom and again remember if you’re interested in getting some bonus Dropbox space, you can click the link. That’S underneath this video in the information about the video and that will take you to a sign-up page, where you can sign up for Dropbox you’ll, get bonus, storage, and so will I .