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Forum Discussion
How to open dropbox link from slack to finder?
Our teams use Dropbox and Slack and we daily share internal dropbox project links from our dropbox to Slack.
The question everyone has, how can you easily open a dropbox link from slack to reveal i...
Short answer... no.
And remember that the path to a file on your computer will not be the same as the path to a file on someone else's computer, even if that file is in the same shared folder. By default, each user's Dropbox folder is located within their computer user profile, which often include that person's name or username in the path. That means a link to a file on your computer will not work on anyone else's comptuer. Add to that the fact that people can freely rename shared folders to anything they want without impacting the functionality of the share, and that just complicates it even more.
The only way for a full path to a file on your comptuer to work on other comptuers, is if everyone has Dropbox in the exact same location and haven't renamed the shared folder that the file is located in. If that's the case, you can just copy the path to the file from Explorer/Finder and share is at you like.
Sorry for the vague details. We all use Mac (latest Mojave's).
Yes exactly. When I share a link to a project folder for example to my collagues in slack, when they click and open it will open it in dropbox.com and they can browse and download the files. But rather than downloading something that they already have in their hard-drive (in our team dropbox) they could just sync the file in finder and also start working on other files there too.
Lately people just write the dropbox folder path by hand in slack as they do not know a better way.
I think there used to be a link "reveal in finder" or something in the web-version, but I cannot see it anymore or I'm mistaking it to some other service that had something similar.
Walter
Dropbox Staff
Dropbox StaffI think you're referring to the option for opening in Dropbox (the desktop app on your computers) - this would be "Show in Finder" and would appear only if those files are synced to the members' computer(s) too.
As you might know, with Dropbox, you can create a sharable link to any file or folder in your Dropbox folder and anyone with the link can view the contents, but can’t edit them (they'd need to be a part of the shared folder in question to do this).
Is it possible that you're referring to shared folders they've added to their account as well (as this the way for others to have edit rights to the said folder to begin with)?
If that is the case, the focus is on our desktop app. When you access/open files from our website, our desktop app communicates with our site, in order to provide the available options for opening those files. So the first thing to check is that our desktop app is running when you or a teammate of yours access these links.
Thanks for your reply!
Sorry this is clearly a bit difficult to explain:
Our team uses dropbox business and have the same team main folder synced to their computer with all the subfolders as online-only.
If I'm working on a project folder inside that team folder, and want to share that folder location via slack to my colleagues so that they can easily open that folder in their computer's finder (as they have that same team dropbox and should have that folder already on their hard-drive synced as online-only or maybe even local), there seems to be no easy way to do this.
What I understand my only options are:
1) Just manually write that location (which could be very deep in the folder structure) in slack, and they will go to their finder and start clicking trough our team dropbox folder to find it so that they can start working on the files
2) Use "Copy Dropbox link" and paste it to slack so that people can open that folder in web, view previews and download files. However this is the problem as our team members need to work on the files and again manually locate that folder on our dropbox to do so.
So what I'm asking is, is there a way to copy and share the location of a folder inside the same team dropbox, as the dropbo web does not seem to have the option to locate that folder on your computer if you would have that synced?
Hi, Lauri:
I have this exact same problem. One workaround I found:
Let's say you're in the shared folder in Finder. You can right-click and you'll see the "copy dropbox link," right? You send this to someone, and they click it. It opens on the web version, and they have to download it to work on it (or whatever--I don't use the web version much).
Instead, you can right click, and while the menu is up (where you would see "Copy dropbox link), press the Option key on your keyboard. You will see the right-click menu change. One of the options toward the bottom is "Copy [file] as Pathname." This will give you that long string you mentioned. But, as others said, it will have some stuff that is particular to you. But, for us, you eventually get to the shared portion and can just delete everything before that.
I haven't figured out how to then paste that path name anywhere to get a shortcut to that folder (probably because it is different when shared). So, it doesn't get you there with a link, but it saves some time.
I think what we're talking about here is a deep-link for a file/folder into the app itself. Surely this should be an option for teams to share within with others their organisation. You'd think it would be a pretty basic feature for a tool focussed on teams.
- Rich
Super User II
Short answer... no.
And remember that the path to a file on your computer will not be the same as the path to a file on someone else's computer, even if that file is in the same shared folder. By default, each user's Dropbox folder is located within their computer user profile, which often include that person's name or username in the path. That means a link to a file on your computer will not work on anyone else's comptuer. Add to that the fact that people can freely rename shared folders to anything they want without impacting the functionality of the share, and that just complicates it even more.
The only way for a full path to a file on your comptuer to work on other comptuers, is if everyone has Dropbox in the exact same location and haven't renamed the shared folder that the file is located in. If that's the case, you can just copy the path to the file from Explorer/Finder and share is at you like.
I don't think Lauri was talking about links shared outside her team but rather links shared within the team. And I don't think this answer actually is a solution to the problem at all.
Of course the local dropbox path is different for each user but that is exaclty why this would be such a great feature for Dropbox to implement. Otherwise we could just manage this ourselves by sending absolute paths.
Since Dropbox sync works, Dropbox obviously knows exactly which files in my teams Dropbox cloud folder maps to which files on my local machine. So if I get a Dropbox link from a colleague (in the same Dropbox team), Dropbox should be able to tell me exactly which file that is on my local machine and offer the option to open it.
Here's a use case that I believe would be possible.
- My collegue (in the same dropbox team) sends me a dropbox link
- I click the link and the folder or file opens on dropbox.com
- Om dropbox.com there is a button offering me the option to open the folder/file locally
- Pressing that button opens the local Dropbox.app (either via URL mapping locally if possible or by messaging the opened local Dropbox application) which immediately invokes the "view in finder" logic
Is this impossible to implement? Please let me know why that is in that case.
