Sharing Folders with Dropbox

My wife and I have separate Dropbox accounts. Why? We were sharing one Dropbox account for awhile and then she started to use her iPhone camera more and more. I also started documenting my projects with the iPhone. This meant we were each adding off-topic photos that mixed in with the other person's albums. Plus, we were starting to get tight on the free Dropbox space.

The fix for that was separate accounts. This works well with iPhones - Dropbox will automatically backup your iPhone photos if you set it up that way. What's even better for my wife, sharing photos with her friends is a breeze: open Dropbox Photos (Camera Uploads) on your iPhone; select photos to share; click share; email. This will send a link to your photos to the contacts you choose. Slick!

We still had a need to use the same files for some things, like the password manager file. For this, use the sharing feature in Dropbox.

Here's what I did in Ubuntu 12.04:

Share a folder on Linux

You can share a folder right from your computer if you've installed the Dropbox desktop application.

1. Open your Dropbox folder.
2. Right-click on the folder you want to share to bring up a menu.
3. Select Share This Folder.... This will open the Sharing page on the Dropbox website.
   
   Select Share This Folder... from the contextual menu
4. Enter the email addresses of the people you want to invite.
5. Add a personal message if you'd like and click Share folder.

There are a couple of scenarios to stop sharing.

1. You want to delete a file in the source dropbox and all of the shared locations:
2. You want to delete a file only in the source and allow the copies to still exist

For scenario 1:

• Stop sharing the folder(file) on the source dropbox
• Delete the formerly-shared folder

For scenario 2:

• Delete the shared folder (don't stop sharing first!)
• The shared copies will still exist in other Dropbox accounts