Skip to main content
Category

Video

How to delete Dropbox Links

By Video

If you create links in Dropbox to share with other people, you may have a reason to delete the Dropbox links for security reasons or just because the other person has already accessed or copied the file. This short 4-minute video shows how to delete Dropbox links, set a password for the Dropbox link, or restrict how long the Dropbox link can be shared. The narrator is the author of Dropbox In 30 Minutes.

How to turn off Camera Uploads on the Dropbox app

By Video

Learn how to better manage the storage space on your phone and tablet by turning off Camera Uploads on the Dropbox app. This 3-minute video applies to recent versions of the Dropbox app on iOS devices such as the iPhone 5, iPhone 6, iPhone 6S, iPhone 6S Plus and iPhone SE. It includes separate tips for photos, video, and carrier vs. wi-fi transfers. The narrator of the iPhone tutorial is Ian Lamont, author of Dropbox In 30 Minutes.

Dropbox: How to recover deleted files and folders using “Events”

By Video

I recently made a huge mistake in Dropbox. From my desktop computer, I deleted two folders — one shared, and one not — that collectively contained more than 9,000 files, including mission-critical files for my business. I watched in horror as Dropbox synced the deletion to my master Dropbox account, which then replicated to all other devices linked to the same Dropbox account.

Now, if you have read my book Dropbox In 30 Minutes or have seen some of my other videos, you know there is a relatively easy way to restore deleted Dropbox files using the Dropbox.com website. You can see the video here.

But, when you’ve deleted thousands of files and hundreds of folders, it’s a huge hassle to manually restore all of them. It can take hours to hunt around on Dropbox.com, find the trashed folders and files, and right-click to restore them.

Fortunately, Dropbox offers a way to get back all of the files and folders at once. It involves the “Events” tab on the Dropbox.com website, which is a list of all Dropbox activities (updates, deletions, etc.) going back one month. The video below describes how to do it. This is the method I used to get my 9,000+ files and folders back to the way they had been before.

Note that this method will not work if the deletion event took place more than one month ago. In addition, if you have added files and folders to your Dropbox account since the deletion event, it may cause issues when you try to restore using the Events link.

Without further ado, here’s the video:

Dropbox Android app: How to delete a file or folder

By Blog, Video

If you use Dropbox on an Android phone or tablet, you may be looking at the minimalist interface and wondering how to delete a file or folder. It’s easy to do, as this short, two-minute video demonstrates:

If you have to delete multiple files within a Dropbox folder, but don’t want to delete the entire folder, the Android app will slow you down. In such cases I recommend you handle deletions on the desktop. The video How To Permanently Delete Multiple Files in Dropbox, explains how.

For more tips on how to use Dropbox for collaboration, backing up files, and making it easier to manage photos, check out the contents for Dropbox In 30 Minutes.

What is Camera Uploads, and how to manage photos in Dropbox

By Blog, Video

If you are new to Dropbox, you may have seen a folder called “Camera Uploads”. What is Camera Uploads? It’s a feature in the Dropbox mobile app that automatically syncs the pictures you take on your smartphone (iPhone, Android, etc.) and automatically uploads them to your Dropbox account. This short blog post and the two videos shows how Camera Uploads works, and how you can manage the storage space and photos in it.

As you can imagine, Camera Uploads takes care of a big problem — syncing photos between your smartphone and PC. It happens wirelessly in the background when the app is turned on, so you don’t even have to think about it.

But Camera Uploads causes a few problems:

  1. The uploaded photos and movies eat up your Dropbox storage space
  2. The photos aren’t organized into albums

The following video and the linked blog post I wrote earlier this year show you how to manage Camera Uploads. The video shows you how to delete photos, either one at a time or in batches. The blog post shows you how to use Dropbox Photos, to organize the pictures in Camera Uploads into albums.

For more information about Dropbox and how to get the most out of the desktop and mobile apps, download the ebook or buy the paperback version of Dropbox In 30 Minutes. For more information about Dropbox, visit Dropbox.com.

Video: Manage the Camera Uploads folder

Blog post: What are Dropbox Photos, and how can they help you organize images?