Dropbox is the popular cloud file storage service that offers 2GB of free cloud space for every user who signs up with them. It is great cloud service that lets you access your files, pictures, videos, documents from anywhere in the world. You can also share large files with friends and families. Now Yahoo! Mail has the Dropbox plug-in built inside their web mail interface, so that you can upload files to your Dropbox account and share the links through email messages. But before you can use the Dropbox feature in Yahoo! Mail, you have to turn it on. Here is how you can use Dropbox in Yahoo! Mail to share large files:
- Open your web browser and point it to Yahoo! Mail website. If you have not already logged in to your Yahoo! Mail account, then sign in using your Yahoo! account username and password.
- When Yahoo! Mail website fully opens up, press the hotkey N to start composing a new email message. In the new email compose message window, click on the downward arrow next to the paperclip icon and select Share from Dropbox as shown in the picture below.
- First time you try to share files from Dropbox into Yahoo! Mail, you have to sign-in to your Dropbox account through Yahoo!. You can sign-up for a new Dropbox account through Yahoo!. If you already have a Dropbox account, then you have to click on Sign-in to Dropbox and supply your email address and password to log on to your Dropbox account.
- After you have logged in to your Dropbox account, you can link your dropbox account to Yahoo! Mail, so that you do not have to log on to Dropbox each time you share files in your Dropbox account. To link your Dropbox account with Yahoo!, click on the Link account button.
- Once you have linked the Dropbox account, you do not have to go through steps 3 and 4 next time. Next time you click on the paperclip icon and select Share from Dropbox, it would open a popup window showing the contents of your Dropbox account. You can choose one or more of the files that you want to share with the recipients of the email message and click on the Choose button. This would add sharing links to those selected files on your Dropbox account in the email message.
You can send the email message now, the recipient would be able to click on the links that you shared for your Dropbox files and view or download those files. This way you can share very large files with your friends and family. Dropbox allows you to upload files of size even larger than 25 GB, so you do not have to worry about file sizes anymore.
- In addition to sharing the links of files you already have in your Dropbox account, you can also upload attachments you receive in emails to your Dropbox account. To do this, you can click on the downward arrow next to the Save button shown for an attachment, and select Save to Dropbox. You would be shown a prompt to choose a destination folder in your Dropbox account. By default, all attachments from Yahoo! Mail are saved in a folder named Yahoo! Mail but you are free to choose another folder. After selecting a folder, click on the Save button and that file would be saved to your Dropbox account.
Yahoo! Mail gives options to sign-up for a new Dropbox account, but if you are having some difficulties, then you can sign-up with Dropbox cloud service directly through their website www.dropbox.com to get 2GB free space. For better Dropbox experience you can also download the desktop client for Dropbox and install it on your system. The Dropbox clients are available for Windows, Mac and Linux. After the installation, you can log in to your Dropbox account in the desktop client using your email address and password. The desktop client keeps syncing your cloud files with your local shared folders and gives you more control over the file sharing.