I use my YouSendIt online folders at work to collaborate with colleagues on a number of files – we share calendars, databases, instructional manuals, spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and a multitude of other documents.
Chalk drawing by Iris, age 7. Courtesy of www.thearsenalsj.com
On weekends, I assist in teaching drawing and painting classes. Via our YouSendIt Folders, the instructors and I collaborate on several documents, including class schedules, syllabi, lecture outlines, and promotional material. We also have several documents that we like to share with our students, and we don’t want to ask each and every one of them to sign up for a YouSendIt account. What we do is set up a read-only YouSendIt folder for each class, so that all students have online access to course-related documents.
In this Feature Friday post, I’ll show you how to create a read-only online folder that you can share with anybody, so that you have a portal to store and modify large amounts of data that anyone with the URL has access to!
Creating a Read-Only Public Folder
- To create a read-only public folder, first log into your YouSendIt account on www.yousendit.com.
- Click the Folders tab at the top of the page.
- Click the Create Folder button, and enter a name for your new folder.
- Hover your cursor over the new folder, and click the Actions pulldown menu. Click Share.
- You will be prompted to enter a number of Share Options.
- Enter an email address you wish to share this folder with. The recipient of the email invitation will receive a link to your read-only folder, which you will need if you wish to share it with multiple people. The easiest way to retrieve this link would be to send an invitation to an email address of yours that isn’t attached to your YouSendIt account; alternatively, you could ask the recipient to forward the invitation back to you.
- You can enter a message for the recipient. This is optional.
- In the Permissions section, select View folder content, and uncheck Require verification to view my files (if you leave this checked, only those who were invited to share the folder will be able to view it).
- Click Save.
- An email will be sent to those you shared the folder with. As stated above, you’ll need to access this email so that you have a link to the shared folder. Assuming that you shared the folder with yourself at second email address, open the email invitation to access the folder. Click the link that reads View this folder.
- You will be directed to the folder in your web browser. Copy the URL of this folder and save it somewhere, or bookmark the folder. (You can always go back to the email invitation to retrieve the URL)
- Share this URL with anyone you wish to have access to the folder. Anyone with the URL will be able to download the contents of the folder, and only you (and any other user with read-write access) will be able to modify the folder’s contents.
I use folders this way to share documents with students, but I’m sure other users will find numerous instances where read-only folder can come in handy. It’s a really efficient way to distribute a group of documents, which you can edit and modify whenever you want. And, if you ever wish to change who has access to your folder, you can always modify your folder’s permission settings in the Folders section of your YouSendIt account.
I hope you’ve found this Feature Friday post useful. If you have any questions, or if you’d like to share ideas about how you may use this feature, please feel free to post your thoughts in this thread. Thanks!
To view past Feature Friday posts, click here.
#featurefriday
