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Single biggest shortcoming about Google Drive in an enterprise environment: There's no option to download an entire folder from a shared (public) link. We use

Single biggest shortcoming about Google Drive in an enterprise environment: There's no option to download an entire folder from a shared (public) link. We use Google Apps but not all of our customers / partners / contractors do, and some large collections of shared files need to be downloaded and not simply viewed on a public webpage.

scholia 13y ago
To download a file you've created, you have to choose the public file format you want to export it to, don't you? Isn't that the only way to get them out the Gdrive lobster pot? If you let other people export your files, how do you know what they're going to look like? Do you do test downloads first? (Forgive the ignorance. I gave up on Gdrive very quickly when I saw what it did to Microsoft Ofice documents....)
- spinchange 13y ago
  There's no problem downloading a folder you've created yourself, or even if you're sharing it with someone else who has a Google Drive account. (They just have to add the folder to their own Drive account first, then they can download or sync it locally) The issue is sharing, say, a folder of PDFs or images with someone who doesn't have a Google account or one associated with their employer. They can view the entire collection and even download individual files in it piecemeal. They cannot download the entire folder as one can with Dropbox, Box, et al. I'm sure they do this to save on bandwidth and to push Drive adoption & account sign-ups, but it's very inconvenient for commercial use, especially when it's possible to do on free tiers of other competing services.
meritt 13y ago
I've found box.net to be the best solution for that. We're able to give our clients access to a hierarchy of files and folders, access just requires a password (no box.net account or software) and we even get an analytics dashboard to keep tabs on what/when they're accessing things. https://www.box.com/business/secure-file-sharing/ https://www.box.com/business/secure-file-sharing/ If anyone has alternatives for this use-case I'd love to hear about them as well, as Box.net only offers their API (so we can auto-upload files) for enterprise accounts and that's a big problem for us.
- spinchange 13y ago
  I've found Box to be the "go to" solution for this as well. We don't have to share large collections often enough to justify a monthly subscription yet, but may in the future. I just find it to be a shame that we pay for Google Apps, get our people used to and accustomed to using things like Drive and then have to find/pay for another SaaS solution (that's more than we pay for the entire suite of Google Apps) just because people outside our organization can't download a folder from Google's file hosting service w/o signing up for it themselves.

scholia 13y ago

To download a file you've created, you have to choose the public file format you want to export it to, don't you? Isn't that the only way to get them out the Gdrive lobster pot? If you let other people export your files, how do you know what they're going to look like? Do you do test downloads first? (Forgive the ignorance. I gave up on Gdrive very quickly when I saw what it did to Microsoft Ofice documents....)

spinchange 13y ago
There's no problem downloading a folder you've created yourself, or even if you're sharing it with someone else who has a Google Drive account. (They just have to add the folder to their own Drive account first, then they can download or sync it locally) The issue is sharing, say, a folder of PDFs or images with someone who doesn't have a Google account or one associated with their employer. They can view the entire collection and even download individual files in it piecemeal. They cannot download the entire folder as one can with Dropbox, Box, et al. I'm sure they do this to save on bandwidth and to push Drive adoption & account sign-ups, but it's very inconvenient for commercial use, especially when it's possible to do on free tiers of other competing services.

meritt 13y ago

I've found box.net to be the best solution for that. We're able to give our clients access to a hierarchy of files and folders, access just requires a password (no box.net account or software) and we even get an analytics dashboard to keep tabs on what/when they're accessing things. https://www.box.com/business/secure-file-sharing/ https://www.box.com/business/secure-file-sharing/ If anyone has alternatives for this use-case I'd love to hear about them as well, as Box.net only offers their API (so we can auto-upload files) for enterprise accounts and that's a big problem for us.

spinchange 13y ago
I've found Box to be the "go to" solution for this as well. We don't have to share large collections often enough to justify a monthly subscription yet, but may in the future. I just find it to be a shame that we pay for Google Apps, get our people used to and accustomed to using things like Drive and then have to find/pay for another SaaS solution (that's more than we pay for the entire suite of Google Apps) just because people outside our organization can't download a folder from Google's file hosting service w/o signing up for it themselves.