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Forum Discussion
Dropbox File shared links bulk export
I have a folder which contains over 400 images, is there any tool to copy all these images' Dropbox links in Excel one time instead of one by one?
I suggest you enable your PUBLIC folder, then load the files into a subfolder say \dropbox\public\images\example.jpg
Once done you can get your NEVER CHANGING public folder link for \dropbox\public ( looks something like https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12345678 )
And simply append the subfolder and filenames to it https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12345678/images/example.jpg
.
Only thing to be careful of is if the subfolder or the filenames require web path conversions (spaces and od characters in the names etc)
I suggest you enable your PUBLIC folder, then load the files into a subfolder say \dropbox\public\images\example.jpg
Once done you can get your NEVER CHANGING public folder link for \dropbox\public ( looks something like https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12345678 )
And simply append the subfolder and filenames to it https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12345678/images/example.jpg
.
Only thing to be careful of is if the subfolder or the filenames require web path conversions (spaces and od characters in the names etc)Dave, this is clear, concise and exactly the information I was after. Thanks you, you are a gem!
- Rich
Super User II
RedLycaste wrote:
Dave, this is clear, concise and exactly the information I was after.
Except that it's no longer valid.
The Public folder is a deprecated feature as of October 2012 and is in the middle of being phased out. Accounts created after October 2012 never received a Public folder and only Pro/Plus/Business accounts could create one. As of March of this year, any Basic account that still had an active Public folder has had it disabled and converted to a regular folder, and the same will happen to Plus and Business accounts in September of this year.
So while it may still work for you (if you have a Plus account that has a Public folder already), it won't continue to work beyond September of this year.
- Mark
No.
Dave, you're a star. I thought I was going to have to manually retrieve heaps of public links. In case anyone else comes across this, here's the solution I employed to get a large text list of public links:-
- ^ What Dave said. ^
- Use a batch file to get a text list of directory contents (Google "batch list directory contents" for plenty of solutions).
- Copy-paste the batch output into Excel (or a freeware CSV editor), B column, fill A column with the public directory path, save as CSV.
- Edit CSV in Notepad, use search/replace to remove the comma separating the directory and filename.
Steps 3 and 4 could be skipped, if I knew how to code batch files, alas no... Too technical for me. If the files need to be web path converted, as Dave says, try Googling "URL encode decode" for more helpful results than "web path converter", and convert the files before step 3.
I don't want to mess around with the API so I just scrape the links using R
1. Put your files in a folder.
2. Get the share link for the folder.
3. Copy link.
4. Log out of dropbox.
5. Go to link.
6. Scroll alllll the way to the bottom.
7. Save page as.
8. Then you can scrape.
Example script.library(rvest) urls <- read_html("path/to/saved/page") %>% html_nodes("a") %>% html_attr("href") cat(urls[grepl("https://www.dropbox.com/sh",urls, fixed = TRUE)], sep = "\n")- Rich
The "Public" folder is a special folder; not one you created. It's also a deprecated feature that no longer exists on new accounts (Pro and Business accounts can still create one; Basic accounts cannot). Public links were replaced by Share links, which can be created for any file or folder in your account (i.e. not limited to the Public folder), but they cannot be generated in bulk.
See here for more information: https://help.dropbox.com/files-folders/public-folder
I've been looking for this with folders (not individual images, although it works with that), and THERE IS AN EASIER WAY!!
Zapier is an if this than that type automation program.
Make a zap and connect your dropbox account and excel
Step 1: Dropbox trigger: Either trigger for when a directory is created or a file is created.
---> there are multiple ways to handle the rest, I have a specific need to distribute to others so I did it like this:
Step 2: Find Row: In the linked excel document, we wanted all folders to be named/distributed by e-mail address so all our folders were named by their e-mail address and we found that row
Step 3: Update Row: One of the fields you can populate to excel is Dropbox link... I had a column that I named "Dropbox link" and populated it there.
Hope this helped!
hi Dave, this is exactly what I need too. BUt I cannot find this "NEVER CHANGING public folder link" how do I get it? Instead i get something like this https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7ukk1v5rs7plv3c/AAChNUFt62VI-FbWsUddd8iDll-4Ka?dl=0 (but not exactly this)
thanks
@Alex, before you share the link, your files must keep in a PUBLIC folder. Eg: dropbox\public
Zhao. please elaborate. Give very specific steps to take.
The folder is called public and it's shared.
thanks
Rich, thanks for the info, though it's very annoying. I'm post 2012, so what are my options then? I only need 1GB storage but i need URLs I can generate without asking the server.
