In this beginner’s guide, you’ll learn what Dropbox is, how to sign up, and what kinds of special features make Dropbox a great choice for backing up and storing your important files. Sounds great, right? There’s a reason Dropbox has 600 million users and counting. If your PC breaks or you’re away from your regular computer, Dropbox has your back, making it easy to pull whatever you need from the cloud. There are plenty of other cool features, too, such as sharing, collaborating, and the ability to view previous versions of a document.īasically, you can think of Dropbox as a big virtual file cabinet that stores all your important documents.

Pro Tip: Before traveling, make sure you have all the files you might need, since you won't be able to sync folders back onto your computer without internet access.Dropbox is a cloud-based file storage service that lets you backup files on your computer and access them from anywhere. For example, I'll sometimes sync a large folder to get a presentation or Photoshop file I need, and then unsync it a few hours later when I'm done. You can change the folders you have on your computer as often as you need.

This will remove the files from your computer-freeing up space-without having to delete the files.

Uncheck any folders that you'd like to keep in the cloud but don't need access to. Here, you'll see all of your Dropbox folders. Click the 'Change Settings' button next to 'Selective Sync.' And it's easy, too:Ĭlick on the Dropbox icon in your desktop header.Ĭlick on the settings icon in the bottom right corner, and select 'Preferences.'Ĭlick on 'Advanced,' and you'll see three options. By changing settings that Dropbox calls 'Selective Sync,' you can keep all of the documents you have synced with Dropbox on the cloud (that fancy term for 'the internet') but pick and choose which ones take up space on your computer based on your needs.

How to use dropbox on computer