Manage external sharing in your team

Admins Updated Sep 11, 2025

In this article

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This article describes settings available to certain types of admins on Dropbox Standard, Advanced, Business, Business Plus, and Enterprise.

Sharing files and folders outside your team

These settings allow you to choose individual Dropbox products to allow or limit sharing outside the team.

Who can be added to files and folders

This setting controls whether team members can invite people outside the team to view or edit files and folders by email or entire email domains.

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Important: When this setting is On, anyone with access can share the contents. Make sure your team only shares files and folders with people you trust. You can also monitor team sharing activity in the admin console.

If Who can be added to files and folders is set to Members + approved people, you can add individual users by email or entire email domains. To add people or valid email domains to the approved list:

  1. Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
  2. Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
  3. Under Products, click the dropdown to the left of Dropbox.
  4. Click Settings.
  5. Under External sharing, scroll to Who can be added to files and folders.
  6. Change Members only to Members + approved people
  7. Click Manage to the right of the Approved list.
  8. Enter the email of the user or the entire email domain that you want to add to the approved list.
  9. Press enter on your keyboard.
  10. Click Done.
  11. Click Save on the banner at the bottom of your screen.
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Notes:

  • This setting doesn’t affect existing access.
  • Adding a top-level domain, for example “example.com”, will also allow members to share with subdomains such as “x.example.com” or “y.example.com”.
  • The approved list does not apply to shared links. 

Share links to files and folders

This setting controls whether team members can share links with people outside the team.

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Note: Your link restriction policies only apply to team members. If you give an external partner access to a file or folder, they can create a link to share that content with others, even if your team’s Sharing links externally policy is set to Off.

  • On: Team members can share links with people outside the team. Team members can override the Default shared link privacy setting described below.
  • Off: Team members can’t share links with people outside the team or create new links. In addition, existing links created by team members will no longer work for people outside the team.
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Note: If you share a file or folder with an external partner using a link, they can share it with other external parties with the same link. They can’t create their own shared link since each file or folder can only have one edit link and one view-only link.

 

Share files using Transfer

This setting applies to files sent using Dropbox Transfer. To manage this setting:

  1. Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
  2. Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
  3. Under Products, click the dropdown to the left of Dropbox.
  4. Click Settings.
  5. Under External sharing, scroll to Sharing files using Transfer.
  6. Toggle Share files using Transfer to On.

Share Replay content outside your team

This setting applies to links sent using Dropbox Replay. To manage this setting:

  1. Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
  2. Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
  3. Under Products, click the dropdown to the left of Dropbox.
  4. Click Settings.
  5. Under External sharing, scroll to the Sharing Replay content outside your team section.
  6. Next to Who can be added to Replay projects or Who can members share links to Replay files and projects with, click the dropdown menu and select either:
    • Anyone
    • Members + approved people
    • Members only 
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Note

Shared file link settings

These settings apply to files shared by links. They don’t apply to Signatures activity, Dropbox Replay, or Dropbox Transfer links.

Default access for shared links

This setting controls the default privacy of shared links created by team members.

  • Anyone: Anyone can access shared links by default, regardless of whether or not they’re part of the team.
  • Only people added: Team members must invite someone to access the link they create.
  • Members only: Only team members can access shared links by default.

Default permissions for shared links

This setting controls the default permissions for shared links created by team members.

  • None: Team members can specify their own default permissions for shared links.
  • Can view: Anyone with access to the file via link can only view it.
  • Can edit: Anyone with access to the file via link can edit it.
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Notes:

  • Team members can override the default shared link privacy and permission settings and choose to give anyone access to shared links.
  • If you want to set an expiration or require a password, you must set the default access for shared links to Team members or Only people invited.

Set an expiration for new links shared outside your team

This setting allows you to set a specific expiration date for shared links created by team members. After the selected date, Dropbox will automatically disable the shared link. Anyone attempting to access the link after the expiry date will be given an error message.

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Note: You can Set an expiration for links shared outside your team. From here, you have the option to Allow members to remove or extend expiration for the shared link.

Require password for new links shared outside your team

This setting allows your team members to set an access password when creating a shared link.

  • On: People with the link will need a password to view it. The team member who creates the link needs to share the password with the recipient.
  • Off: The recipient doesn’t need a password to access shared links.

Blanket link restrictions

If you’re an admin on a Dropbox team, you can manage link access to your team’s shared folders and subfolders. Enabling link restrictions prevents Dropbox users who haven’t been added to a shared folder from accessing that folder via link. This overrides individual folder sharing settings.

  • On: All shared folders will have link restrictions enabled.
  • Off: Link restrictions won't be enabled by default, but team members can still enable them on specific shared folders.
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Note: Blanket link restrictions only apply to your team’s folders and subfolders. They don't apply to shared folders owned by someone else.

If you’re not an admin, you can set link restrictions for individual folders that you own.
 

To do this:

  1. Log in to dropbox.com.
  2. Hover over the name of the folder and click Share.
  3. In the popup, click (settings).
  4. Select the Folder settings tab.
  5. Toggle Link restrictions to On.
     

Folders shared with the team

Adding outside folders

Choose if team members can add editable folders from outside of your Dropbox team: 

  1. Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
  2. Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
  3. Under Products, click the dropdown to the left of Dropbox.
  4. Click Settings.
  5. Under Content, scroll to the Receiving content section.
  6. Toggle Outside folders to On.
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Note: When turning this setting off, folders that members are invited to view only won’t be affected.

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