Automate Your Dropbox Files With Actions

If you don’t know what Dropbox is, your online life is going to be a whole lot easier. With Dropbox, you can simply drop a file into its folder and have it sync automatically on the Cloud. Next thing you know, you can already access the file from all your other devices.

Not only that, there are actually many other things you can do with Dropbox: File conversion, multiple cloud storage syncing, photo editing or even data encryption can be easily applied with a single file drop. That is, with a little help from Wappwolf Dropbox Automator, a free web application. It works by monitoring your defined folder in Dropbox, and can be set to trigger preferred actions to the new files you drop into the folder.

Dropbox Automator And Features

Dropbox Automator provides easy automation to your files in selected folders, and the process is simple;

Set which folder you want to set automation to.
Set the actions you want to apply to the files saved in this folder.
Dropbox Automator will trigger the actions when it finds the supported files in the selected folder.

There are many available ‘actions’ you can use, including converting files to PDF format without having to convert them on your own. The other things you can do with it include:

When you set an action to your folder, Dropbox Automator will start watching your folder. Whenever you save a file into the folder, it will automatically create a new folder called ‘Processed’ inside your selected folder – Dropbox > YourFolder > Processed.

All files you save inside YourFolder will be transferred to Processed folder, where all the original files will be kept. Next, I will walk you through how to set actions to convert documents to PDF.

How To Automate Actions In Dropbox

To start automating actions whenever you move files to Dropbox, go to Wappwolf Dropbox Automator start page and click on the Try now button.
You will have options to connect with your Dropbox account, select to Connect Dropbox or you can also sign up with your email. Select number 2 to give only one folder access to Dropbox-Automator.
After you have selected to connect with Dropbox, you need to allow Wappwolf access to your account. Click Allow.
Select the folder in your Dropbox you want to set automation. Select any folder, or click to create a ‘New Folder’, then click Next.
You will have an option to set the automation action. If you prefer to automate a document, select from the ‘Document’ section. You can select to convert a document to PDF, auto upload to Google Drive cloud storage, send to your Kindle and more (see below).
When you select any action, you will see details of the action. Read to understand how the automation works and to find the supported file types, then click Add Action to proceed.
Once you select an action, scroll down to the bottom and click Add action again.
That’s all you need to do, and now you will be redirected to your status page. Every time you transfer supported files into the selected folder, the conversion status will appear on this page. You can also stop automation, delete and create a new one from here.

Manage Your Dropbox Automation

You have set the automatic action. To automate this action, simply move your file to the folder you have selected. For example if your folder name is ‘Automator’, in Dropbox it wll be Dropbox > Automator. Just move your files to the Automator folder.

Your original files will be moved to Processed folder, while the converted files will be in the parent folder.

Now open your Wappwolf page and you will see the number of files processed highlighted in ‘green’.

Conclusion

This added service to Dropbox is simple, yet it is a great help to help automate many actions you want to do to your files. This will make all the difference when you need to make changes in bulk. Having it automated, you can save a lot of time to do a lot of other things.

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Monday, March 25, 2013