Dropbox Noodge

Dropbox Noodge: a reader asks…

I’ve been invited to upload my own photos from a recent group trip to a Dropbox account of a friend. Unfortunately, I only have a personal account and it’s full. Even though my friend’s Dropbox account has plenty of space, Dropbox won’t let me upload my files to his account. Is there a solution without me having to buy more Dropbox space?

Unfortunately, the solution is one or more workarounds. This is the most annoying thing about Dropbox and one that I think is preventing Dropbox from gaining more market share. I get that they want to maximize their revenue, and that some folks might abuse the personal Dropbox limits by using Dropbox Personal as if it was a business account. But lots of folks simply want to use it to share treasured photos and videos, and the limitation you’ve come up against can make Dropbox simply not work for you. So, workarounds:

First is that anyone can create a separate Dropbox account with a different login, and get another 5gb of storage space. You just have to have an alternate email address, and remember to log in and out of Dropbox. This can be a little cumbersome, but is the only way to make this work without having to increase your Dropbox storage limits while still working within Dropbox.

Second, you can use an alternate location to upload your files, and let your friend move them into Dropbox for you. If you have a Google Drive account, you can share a folder with your friend so they can download all your photos and videos, then upload them into his own Dropbox. More work for the friend, but then at least you have a 15gb Google Drive storage allocation (without paying anything). Or, you can use another cloud-based storage service instead of Google Drive. Same issue of the friend having to do more work, but doable. Pretty much any cloud-based storage service you use can be shared with your friend so they can get access to your photos and videos.

Third, you can use a Thumbdrive or any other removeable storage device to copy all your photos and videos and then loan/give that device to your friend so they can upload all your files to his Dropbox account. Thumbdrives are really cheap these days (for example, a 64gb thumbdrive is only $18 at Amazon).

There are plenty of other methods, but I think these are the most reasonable and simple. If you’ve got a better idea, feel free to leave a comment for us all to see.