Dropbox Paper: admin settings for Dropbox Business teams

Dropbox Paper: A simple, powerful way to work together.

Effortlessly create, share, and keep your team on the same page with the added benefit of admin controls to protect your business.

Enable or disable Paper

To enable or disable Paper for your team:

1. Sign in to dropbox.com with your admin account.
2. Open the Admin Console.
3. Open the Settings tab.
4. Choose Paper under Additional settings.
   • If you don’t see the Paper option, you and your team are using the 2020 release of Dropbox Paper and you can change Paper permissions for your team from the file editing section of your team’s integration settings
5. Toggle Enable Paper on or off.
6. Agree to the Dropbox terms before turning on Paper.
7. Click Apply changes.

Note: Paper is enabled by default for all Standard and Advanced Dropbox Business teams created after August 7, 2017. 

Export all Paper docs

When you disable Paper, you can export your Paper docs to Word or Markdown files. To export your docs:

1. After you disable Paper, click Export # docs. 
2. Choose a file format and click Download.
3. Once the export is complete, you'll receive an email with your Paper docs in your chosen format. In this email, click Download docs.

All active docs owned by team members are exported. Deleted docs aren't exported.

Team-only sharing

Admins of a Dropbox Business team can choose who team members can share Paper docs with. Admins can choose to enable sharing outside the team or to within the Dropbox team only. To restrict sharing to within your team:

1. Sign in to dropbox.com with your admin account.
2. Open the Admin Console.
3. Open the Settings tab.
4. Choose Paper under Additional settings.
   • If you don’t see the Paper option, you and your team are using the 2020 release of Dropbox Paper and your team’s Paper docs have the same sharing permissions as regular files. Learn how to control sharing permissions for regular files. 
5. Toggle Sharing Paper docs externally on or off.
6. Click Apply changes.

This setting is not retroactive and only applies to docs shared once the setting is changed. You can see docs that have been shared with people outside of your team in the activity report.

Note: Changing this setting to Off also prevents team members from creating docs in external folders shared with them.

Default Paper doc privacy

Admins can choose the default privacy setting for links to Paper docs. To toggle default Paper doc privacy:

1. Sign in to dropbox.com with your admin account.
2. Open the Admin console.
3. Open the Settings tab.
4. Choose Paper under Additional settings.
   • If you don’t see the Paper option, you and your team are using the 2020 release of Dropbox Paper and your Paper file privacy can be managed with the rest of your regular files. Learn how to change default privacy settings for regular files in Dropbox. 
5. Next to Default sharing settings, choose from Anyone with link, Members with link, or Disable external sharing.
   • Anyone with link allows anyone with the link—whether they are a team member or not—to open the doc
   • Members with link allows only team members with the link to open the doc. Non-team members will not be able to open the doc even if they have the link
   • Disable external sharing prevents team members from sharing docs with non-team members

Note: The privacy settings for individual Paper docs can be changed if the sharing setting allows it.

Permanent deletion controls

By default the creator can permanently delete a doc or folder after it is archived.

Team admins of a Dropbox Business team can limit permanent deletions of Paper docs to team admins only. To prevent permanent deletions, team admins can turn the team deletion setting to Off.

Note: If Deletions are set to Off, team admins can permanently delete files by signing in as a user.

Note: The setting applies to Dropbox files and Paper docs.

Unlink mobile devices

Admins can unlink devices with the Paper mobile app installed from a team member account.

1. Sign in to dropbox.com with your admin account.
2. Open the Admin Console.
3. Open the Members page.
4. Click the name of the member whose device you want to unlink.
5. Under Paper mobile devices, click to unlink all the mobile devices from Paper.

Note: Since Paper docs aren't saved locally, unlinking Paper mobile devices removes access to any Paper docs on your phone or tablet. This works similarly to remote wipe.

Sign in as user

Team admins of a Dropbox Business team can sign in as a team member. When using sign-in as, admins can:

• View Paper docs and folders
• Share docs and folders with other users
• Move Paper docs and folders
• Restore archived Paper docs
• Archive and permanently delete Paper docs

Admins can’t create, edit, or comment on docs.

To sign in as a team member and access their Paper account:

1. Sign in to dropbox.com with your admin account.
2. Open the Admin Console.
3. Open the Members page.
4. Click the gear icon beside the name of the team member you would like to sign in as.
5. Click Sign in as user.
6. Click Sign in to confirm that you would like to sign in as the selected user.
7. Click the Paper tab.
8. When you’re done, click Sign out.

Note: All actions performed by the admin are recorded in the activity log.

Paper activity log

The Activity page shows a summary of the most recent activity on a team. Admins can select a type of Paper activity on the Activity page or download a full activity report.

Paper events are recorded for:

• Doc creation and editing
• Doc commenting and resolution of comments
• Doc sharing with team members and non-team members
• Doc archiving and permanent deletion of docs
• Doc access requests from team members and non-team members
• Doc viewed by team members and non-team members
• Changes to sharing policy

To view the activity log:

1. Sign in to dropbox.com with your admin account.
2. Open the Admin Console.
3. Open the Activity page.