How to manage sharing settings for your team

Updated May 15, 2024

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

If you’re an admin for a Dropbox team account, you can manage sharing settings for your entire team. To access sharing settings in the admin console:

Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
Click Settings.
Under Content, click Sharing.

Note: Changes to these settings do not apply retroactively.

Sharing outside your team

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

Share files via email

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.

Important note: 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.

On (anyone): Team members can share with both people who are on the team and people who aren’t on the team.
- If this setting is Off, your team doesn’t have access to Dropbox Replay unless you have already purchased the Replay Add-On. If you have, you’ll still see Replay but it won’t adhere to your global Dropbox external sharing settings.
On (team + approved): Team members can only share with people who are on the team and people on the team’s approved list.
Off (team only): Team members can only share with people who are on the team.

Notes:

If you choose to allow sharing externally, you can view a list of the top email address domains that your team is sending files to in the admin dashboard. However, this list won’t include sharing via links.
This setting doesn’t affect existing access.
Team members can manage view and comment permissions directly in Dropbox Replay in each media file’s share settings.
- Team members can revoke permissions in Dropbox Replay by disabling existing shared links. Learn more about managing permissions in Dropbox Replay.

If Sharing externally is set to On (team + approved), you can add individual users by email or entire email domains. To add people or valid email domains to the approved list:

Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
Click Admin console.
Click Settings.
Under Content, click Sharing.
Click Show approved list.
Fill in the emails or domain names that you want to add to the exception list.
Click X next to an email or domain to remove it.

Notes:

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

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

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.

Notes:

Dropbox is moving to an updated shared link architecture where links are based on content rather than on users. This will affect how links are created and shared. The new links can be identified by the presence of an ‘rlkey’ parameter in the URL. For these links, the above behavior will perform differently.
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 Send and track links

This setting applies to files sent using Send and track. To manage this setting:

Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
Click Settings.
Under Content, click Sharing.
Under the Allow sharing outside your team, toggle Share “Send and track” links on to allow team members to share “Send and track” links outside the team.

Send signature requests

This setting applies to files sent using the Signatures page. To manage this setting:

Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
Click Settings.
Under Content, click Sharing.
Under the Allow sharing outside your team section, toggle Send signature requests on to allow team members to send signature requests outside the team.

Share files using Transfer

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

Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
Click Settings.
Under Content, click Sharing.
Under the Allow sharing outside your team section, toggle Share files using Transfer on.

Share Replay links

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

Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
Click Settings.
Under Content, click Sharing.
Under the Allow sharing outside your team section, click Manage next to Share Replay links to open up Replay and manage shared links directly.

Share Capture links

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

Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
Click Settings.
Under Content, click Sharing.
Under the Allow sharing outside your team section, click Manage next to Share Capture links to open up Capture and manage shared links directly.

Shared file link settings

These settings apply to files shared by links. They don’t apply to Signatures activity, Dropbox Replay, Dropbox Capture, Dropbox Transfer, or “Send and track” links.

Default access for shared links

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

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

Default permissions for shared links

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

Off: Team members can specify their own default permissions for shared links.
Edit: Anyone with access to the file via link can edit it.
View-only: Anyone with access to the file via link can only view it.

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.

Note: You can Set an expiration for links shared outside your team. From here, you have the option to Allow members to remove or change 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 will not be enabled by default, but team members can still enable them on specific shared folders.

Note: Blanket link restrictions only apply to your team’s folders and subfolders. They do not 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:

Log in to dropbox.com.
Hover over the name of the folder and click the share icon (rectangle with an up arrow).
In the popup, click Settings.
Select the Folder settings tab.
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:

Log in to dropbox.com with your admin credentials.
Click Admin console in the left sidebar.
Click Settings.
Click Sharing.
Under Folders shared with the team, toggle Adding outside folders to On.