Download shared folder items using the IMAP protocol

[diverso]

I had this strange idea today: what if some of our almost clueless(*) users  could get the contents of a shared folder to their phone/tablet/PC using their regular e-mail client and the IMAP protocol.

The file name (minus the file extension) would  become the e-mail subject, its creation date the e-mail date, the file content an e-mail attachment etc.

Any comments associated with a particular file could be included in the e-mail message body.

Upon successful delivery of each message (file), the file gets (optionally) deleted.

This probably means a sharing link related (unique) IMAP server address and anonymous login, something like 

imaps://imaps.dropbox.com/shared_mailbox/91aRYABiBc3Sdv40yhKvdOXotnlKV2Ucysjd84AsKq3/INBOX

(see RFC 2192)

This is essentially the complement of the "Email to Dropbox" feature.

Does this make sense to anyone else? Is it even feasible?

*: computer-illiterate people facing great difficulty to understand (and remember!) the difference between local/remote/synced/shared content and totally unreliable to download a number of individual files from a dropbox shared folder serially (some files may end up missing, others may get downloaded more than once).  Downloading an archive containing all the files (eg. a zip file) is no better solution as these users generally don't realize that they have to extract the relevant content before processing it or sending it to someone else, and the problem is that either their file processing software cannot cope with zip files, or that they send the whole bunch instead of that one file that is really needed.

[Walter]

This idea has been closed due to inactivity. 

Thank you for your suggestion, and if you have another idea to share, please do! 

[Walter]

Hey @diverso - thanks for posting your idea in our Community.

Just to clarify, you'd  like a feature where you could send a folder you have in your Dropbox account via email and instead of sharing a link to the folder, have the actual contents of the folder within the email without having to manually attach the files as you'd need to do at this time? 

Let us know more and we'll take it from there. 

[diverso]

> and instead of sharing a link to the folder, have the actual contents of the folder within the email

No,  that's not what I meant. I was dreaming of sharing a (unique) imaps link (generated by dropbox) instead of the usual https hyperlink (generated by dropbox) . Only the link is to be sent to the files' recipients (not the contents themselves). The sharing of the link can even happen over non-email channels (e.g. chat, webpages).  The delivery of the content is done exclusively in the user's email software, the sharing of the link can be done in multiple ways. 

In other words,  what I was thinking of is the existing file delivery service masquerading as an IMAP server (with shared-content specific unique addresses and allowing anonymous login).

Thank you for your reply.

[Walter]

Thanks for clarifying that for me @diverso 

This idea is now open. 

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[Walter]

This idea has been closed due to inactivity. 

Thank you for your suggestion, and if you have another idea to share, please do!