How To Share Files Using iCloud

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to share files using iCloud from your Mac.

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Now often you want to share a file or a group of files with another person. You may be tempted to send that file in an email or a message but not everybody is thrilled about getting a large attachment. Sometimes you're not in a convenient place to download that attachment. You'd rather download it when you're ready. Sharing the file using a Cloud service is a much better idea. You could just send a link and then the person who receives either the email or message can download it when they want. Plus you can actually really share a file this way instead of passing something back and forth you could access the same file. One person can make changes and the other person would instantly see them. The file is truly a shared file between people but they could also make their own copy of the file or you can make a copy of the file and share that copy. You can also share an entire folder full of files using iCloud Drive. 

So let's say, for instance, you want to share a document like this Pages document here.  So the first thing is to make sure you're using iCloud Drive. Now if you're using iCloud Drive for all your files like I am this is no problem. All your files are ready for sharing. If not you can make a copy of it and put it in iCloud Drive or just move it to iCloud Drive for sharing. Now you could start sharing many different ways. For instance you could select the file and go to File and then Share and then Share File. You can also select the file and then click the Actions button here or you can Control Click, right click on the mouse, two-finger click on the trackpad and select Share and then Share File. These will all take you to the same place, a dialogue that looks like this. You could see here how to share it.

Now this really isn't how to Share the file. This is how to notify the person that the file is being shared. So you can send them an email, send them something like Message, or just copy the link and send it anyway that you want. You could also AirDrop it they're nearby. This will just send them a link, not the file itself. Now here you can specify the Apple ID of whomever you want to Share with. But if they don't have an Apple ID you could put their email address there and that's where the notification will go. Then they can deal with it on their end as to how they receive the file. You can select only people you invite to get it. This is typical if you want to share with one other person you're going to want to specify their email address and they are the only ones that get it. But you could also do anyone with a link meaning you can make this public. So lots of people can actually access this. All they need is the link. They don't need any special privileges. Then you could also set Permission. They can make changes to the document or View Only. So if you just want to give somebody a file but you don't want them making changes to the file on your drive then say View Only. That way they can view it, they can download a copy, but they can't make changes to your copy of it. So decide which of those options that you want. So, for instance, if you want to just give somebody a file then say View Only and only people that we invite. Then you type the Apple ID or the name of the person that's been in your contacts and then select the method. So, for instance, we'll just copy a link here and we'll hit Share.    

Now I'm going to open up and new private window just so we can simulate what somebody else sees when they look at the link. I'll paste this link in here. So here's what they would see then when they open a URL in Safari. You get a little preview of the document, the name of the document, and you could open it in Pages. Now if you choose to open it in Pages you could save your own copy of it but you can't change the original. If they are not on a Mac they could still open it using the web path version of Pages. So they could still access the document. So, for instance, here I am in the web app version of Pages. So you see now I could open it in the actual Pages app since I am on a Mac. You could see this is set to View Only so I can't actually edit it. But I can click here and download my own copy of it. 

Let's say I share an image. What happens then. I'm going to select this image here. Share a File. I'll just use Copy Link here. I'll send it to that same person. Set it to View Only again and Share. Now when I go to this URL I'll get this screen here. So here it shows the name of the image and I can add it to my iCloud Drive right here. Let me do that. Now you could see it takes me to the iCloud Drive App on the web but I can see the same thing if I look on my Mac in my iCloud Drive folder. The image is now there. So I have my own copy of it. Also right here from the web I could use this button right here to actually download that file locally. 

Now if you want to change how a file is shared you could select it and go through those steps again except this time you'll see Manage Shared File instead of Share File. So when I select that it will show me here that I'm the owner and I have options here. It will show me anybody that I've shared it with and I've got options here as well. I can change the access to it. I can copy the link again. I could stop sharing or Add more people to share it with. So let's stop this one from sharing and let's share another document instead. Share this one. This time I'm going to set it to Anyone With a Link, View Only. So this is still semi-secure because the link is really obscure. It's not going to be something that could just be easily guessed or is found somewhere when you search online. So for quickly sharing a document that doesn't need that much security to somebody else you can do this temporarily until they get the file. This way they don't have to mess with their Apple ID or even worrying if they have an Apple ID or iCloud Account. 

So now when I pasted this link in here in a private window I'll see this right here. You could see right here in addition to Add to my iCloud Drive since I am on a Mac with iCloud Drive you could also just click Download a Copy and then it will download directly to my downloads folder. So that's probably your simplest option. Take a look at this URL here. You could see it's pretty much the equivalent of an ID and password because it's so long. You have to know all of this information in order to access this file. So it's pretty easy to share with somebody. As soon as they send you an email back or a message saying, Hey thanks I got it then you can go back to the file here, go to Manage Shared File, and then Stop Sharing that file. Then you're done. Somebody else has gotten your file without having to create a large attachment or try to communicate back and forth about how to best share the file. 

Now the next level is to share a folder. So, for instance, I could take this folder here, called example files, and I could use the same methods to access sharing for it.. But this time it says Share Folder and now I can use one of these methods here and share the entire folder. So let's set this up for only people I invite and the Apple ID for that person and let's set this one to View Only. So I'll share this. Let's paste that in here to a private window. You can see here I could add it to my iCloud Drive. So once I do that now if I look in my iCloud Drive folders I've got all of those files available to me. You could see here at the top level of iCloud Drive, Example Files shared by MacMost Demo is right there. I could see this in the Finder as well. Now on the web here I could select any file I want and download it. But, of course, looking at iCloud Drive the files are just there. I can't edit them but I can make copies of them and view them. The best thing about a shared folder is that I could add files to this and those new files will show up. So, for instance, let's take this Alice document here and I'm going to Copy it. I'm going to go in here and paste it in and you could see it's now in there. Then here when I refresh this page that new file is there. It's shared with that person. So if there is a person you need to share files with on a regular basis you can just create a Shared Folder for that person and put that in iCloud Drive and then any files you want to share with them just add to that folder. 

So here's what it looks like on the other end. Somebody has just shared a folder with me and they decided to send me a Notification by text message. So you can see I got this text message. Go in here and it says open my shared folder. I can click it and it will ask me if I want to Open this. I say Yes, and then you could see it's going to open a new Finder window right away here with the Test folder. So this is the folder that was shared with three documents in there. If I look in iCloud Drive I can see Test right there and I can open up a file here with this set to View Only.  So you can see here it says View Only. But I can always duplicate it or I'm going to hold the Option key down here and Save As. I can also drag and drop and it will make a copy of that file. 

So this is Read Only sharing here. I can View and I can Copy a version of it but I can't change the version that the owner of the file has. Then if you choose different options, like for instance you choose Can Make Changes, then that person can also put files in there and you could see them. So it could be the shared folder but between the two of you. An easy way to transfer things. If you just sent them a message saying Hey, that new file you wanted it's now in our shared folder. Well then they would be able to get it. Then they could put a file for you in there as well. You can share this folder with a whole bunch of people, say classmates that you're working on a project with or team members at work and you could all put shared files in there. If they don't have an Apple ID or they're not even on a Mac they could still get access to them and still use the web interface to upload files to it. Remember Apple ID's and iCloud Drive accounts are free. You don't need on a Mac to sign up for one. You can just create your own account and use it for sharing. Also keep in mind that other Cloud services, like DropBox, Microsoft 1 Drive, and Goggle Drive all work the same way. So you can create shared folders and shared files in those and use those to share with others as well. There's no reason not to use multiple ones. So, for instance, if you have a team that's already using DropBox for something, continue to use DropBox. If you want to create something and you decide you want to use iCloud Drive for that you can use iCloud Drive for that. You don't have to choose one and only use that Cloud solution. You can use whichever one fits the situation best. So if you have to share large files with people use a Cloud Service like iCloud Drive to share those files instead of having them as attachments in email or sending them some other way.