Use Special Mac and PC Features

Beyond the primary uses for the Mac and PC Dropbox app (such as syncing, sharing, and Camera Upload—all discussed elsewhere in this book), a number of special features have appeared that will appeal to certain users.

In this chapter, I describe the Dropbox badge (for Microsoft Office users) and integration with Adobe’s Acrobat products. Also, in Manage Desktop Notifications, I cover desktop notifications, which are perhaps less special (in that they’ve been around for quite some time) but still worth knowing about—especially if you find them excessively intrusive or annoying.

Later in the chapter, I talk about Finder integration for OS X users in Use or Disable OS X Finder Integration.

Use the Dropbox Badge

On Macs and Windows PCs, if you open a Microsoft Office document that’s stored in your Dropbox, you’ll see the Dropbox logo in a circle on the right edge of the window. This is the Dropbox badge.

By default, a popover (Figure 35) with various relevant commands appears next to the badge; you can toggle the display of this popover by clicking the badge icon.

The purpose of the badge (or, more specifically, the popover) is to give you a quick shortcut to activities you may want to perform with these Office files:

• Share Link: Copy a link to the file to your Clipboard.
• Comment: Add a comment to the file using the Dropbox Web site.
• View File History: Display previous versions of this file on the Dropbox Web site.

In addition, if the file is in a shared folder, you may see one or more of the following in the popover:

• Shared Folder Settings: Click here to open the Shared Folder Options dialog box for this folder on the Dropbox Web site (see Invite Someone to a Dropbox Folder).
• Collaborator editing status: When another person edited the file more recently than you, you’ll see Edited by Name and how recent that edit was.
• See who’s editing: If the document is in a shared folder and someone else is currently editing it, the badge shows that person’s picture or initials (instead of the Dropbox logo). If the other person has unsaved changes, the badge turns into a lock icon; if both of you are editing at the same time (which could result in version conflicts), you’ll see an exclamation point icon; and when the other person saves changes, the badge becomes a download icon, which you can click (followed by Get Name’s Version) to update your copy of the file.

If the badge is in your way (by default it appears on the right edge of the window, in the middle vertically), you can drag it to any other location on the edge of the window. And, if you don’t want to see the badge at all, you can hide it in any of three ways:

• To hide the badge for just this document—and only during this editing session—click the Hide link at the bottom of the popover and then click OK.
• To show the badge only when other collaborators have a file open, go to Dropbox Preferences > General and choose If Others Present from the Dropbox Badge pop-up menu (Figure 36).

  

• To hide the badge permanently for all documents, go to Dropbox Preferences > General and choose Never Show from the Dropbox Badge pop-up menu.

Use Dropbox with Acrobat

If you use Adobe Acrobat DC or Acrobat Reader DC to view and edit PDF documents, you may appreciate the way Adobe and Dropbox have integrated the most recent versions of their respective apps. Thanks to this integration, you can access documents in your Dropbox right from within Acrobat (just as you can do with documents stored in Adobe’s cloud storage or on a Microsoft SharePoint server); any changes you make to a document opened this way are saved automatically to your Dropbox.

This integration requires a one-time setup procedure. I’ll describe how to do this in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC for Mac; Acrobat Pro for Mac and the Windows versions of both apps are similar. Follow these steps:

1. Open Acrobat Reader.
2. In the sidebar, click Add Account (Figure 37), and then click the Add button under Dropbox.

   

3. In the dialog box that appears, enter your Dropbox username and password, and click Sign In.
4. When you see a message that says “Adobe Acrobat would like access to the files and folders in your Dropbox,” click Allow.

Having done this, you can view the contents of your Dropbox from within Acrobat; select Dropbox (Personal) in the sidebar (Figure 38).

Manage Desktop Notifications

By default, the Mac, Windows, and Linux versions of Dropbox use their respective operating systems’ notification systems to inform you about activity in your Dropbox. For example, if a file in a shared folder changes, or Dropbox creates an automatic link to a screenshot, or someone invites you to share a folder, or any of numerous other events occurs, you’ll get a visible (and possibly audible) notification.

In OS X, the notifications appear in the upper-right corner of your screen by default; Figure 39 shows a few examples. (If you have Growl installed, Dropbox uses that for notifications, thus enabling you to customize them to a greater extent than OS X’s built-in notification system allows.) Windows puts notifications in the lower-right corner of your screen by default. (Linux notifications vary by distribution.)

If you have only a small number of collaborators and shared files—and if it’s critically important for you to be aware of every trivial change to those files—then you might find these notifications useful and interesting. On the other hand, if (like me) you have dozens of collaborators and thousands of shared files that are changing by the minute, the constant barrage of notifications becomes distracting. (And if I train myself to tune them out, they do me no good.)

Dropbox lets you turn these notifications on or off globally; if you leave them on, your operating system may give you slightly more control over how, when, and where they appear. Here’s what you can do:

• Enable or disable all Dropbox notifications: Go to Dropbox > Preferences > General and check or uncheck Show Desktop Notifications.
• Adjust notification settings: Assuming Dropbox’s notifications are turned on, you can make adjustments in the way they’re handled. On a Mac, go to System Preferences > Notifications, select Dropbox in the list on the left, and then set the options to your liking (Figure 40).

  

  On a Windows PC, go to Start > Settings > System > Notifications and Actions > Dropbox (Figure 41) and adjust the settings. On Linux, consult the documentation that came with your distribution.

  

Both OS X and Windows enable you to turn off notifications and decide whether they appear as banners, play sounds, or appear on your lock screen (among other settings).

Unfortunately, because the Dropbox app’s own settings are limited to enabled and disabled, you can’t display notifications only for certain files or folders, only when certain people make changes, or only for certain kinds of actions—exactly the options that would make notifications far more useful to me (and, I’m guessing, most other people).

Use or Disable OS X Finder Integration

If you’re a Mac user, you’ve probably taken advantage of Dropbox’s integration with the OS X Finder. With this integration enabled, the following changes occur in the Finder:

• Badges appear on (or next to) files and folders to indicate their sync status (see Monitor Dropbox).
• The Dropbox toolbar icon is available for you to use when customizing the toolbar of Finder windows (see the sidebar Adding a Dropbox Icon to the Finder Window Toolbar).
• The Move to Dropbox command appears in contextual menus for items that are not already in your Dropbox (see Decide What to Put in Your Dropbox).
• Other Dropbox commands (such as Copy Dropbox Link and View Previous Versions) appear on contextual menus for items that are already in your Dropbox (see Send a link on a computer running the Dropbox app and Work with File Versions).

Ordinarily, all these features are useful, they work when needed, and they’re unobtrusive when not needed. However, if you find any of these extra items visually distracting—or if you encounter crashing or other misbehavior in the Finder that you suspect Dropbox may be involved in—you can disable Finder integration. To do so, go to Dropbox Preferences > General and deselect Enable Finder Integration. (You can return at any time and reenable it by rechecking that box.)