Creating a Group for File Sharing

TidBITS Talk
1

We have a group of people who want to share files. There are three main file sharing services:

  • Google Drive
  • Microsoft OneDrive
  • Dropbox

The problem with each of these is that if I want to share a document with each person in the group, I have to specify each person I’m sharing with. I believe with OneDrive, I can create a group, but only if everyone uses Outlook.

Is there a service I can use to share documents with a group member without having to specify each and every person in a group for each document.

I’ve tried Google Drive, but sooner or later, someone forgets to put someone on the list, or uses the wrong email address.

We do have a paid Groups.io account, and one of the things there is a place to store files. This might be the best place to do this.

However, I’m looking for any suggestions.

2

I don’t use those services, but perhaps you can set up a folder that’s shared with the people, then add documents to that folder. Presumably everyone would get access to the document hierarchically.

1 Like
3

In Dropbox, depending of what you want, you can:
a) share a link to the folder. This allows them to look and download the files. It doesn’t require the other persons have Dropbox.
b) If they have Dropbox, you may, share the folder, and give permissions to let them add or remove content to the folder
Francisco

4

You can buy a domain for ~10-15$ and just use ftp.

5

I take it you mean a server and not a domain. We have a domain.

Unfortunately, FTP is not easy for most people to use.

6

Yes. I know that. In the old days when Dropbox was fun to use. Dropbox would be great. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Dropbox.

Dropbox was easy to use, and Dropbox has nice free accounts. You copy a file in the right folder, and is shared. It was light and fast. Now I have terrible issues using the desktop integration. It’s buggy.

Google Drive isn’t easy to use. You pretty much need to use the webpage and the webpage is poorly laid out. Even I, a highly technical person, have problems using it.

Groups.io, which we use for our email has a place to store files. Groups.io is sort of a replacement of Yahoo Groups.

7

I take it you mean a server and not a domain .

Yes indeed. Hosting was included a long time ago, but I’ve been using it for so long I don’t even think about it.

In terms of complexity… I use Fetch. I open it and am presented the connect dialog, click okay and I’m taken to my default folder. Yes, it’s a little counter intuitive to navigate back through folders, compared to Desktops, but it’s a 1 minute learning process.

You can share download links via email and no one needs an ftp client unless they want to upload, or to browse the files.

That’s it. It’s secure and available to anyone with a password.

I used ftp for file delivery for almost 2 decades, until Apple enabled 5Gbs via email, but it’s still useful for permanent storage. (Mail Drop auto-deletes after a month)