There are two different ways to share your files, and the method that you can use depends on the location of the files. It is possible to Share files that are located on your computer or are stored on a Cloud Service. In this article we will focus on sharing local files.
We can share local files either from a Web page or from the Mac version of the Rainbow – Best Cloud Storage Manager application. The Web version of the Rainbow app doesn’t have this capability, yet.
Web Page
We get to the Web Page by clicking on the “Share Files” button. That will direct us to a new page, the https://www.i-smartshare.com/. There, we see two buttons / options:
- Download Shared Files
- Share Local Files
From that web page we can not only share our local files, but we can also download the shared files on our computer. We will get back to this in a different article.
When we click on the button to Share Local files, we see the following screen:
This screen consists of 3 regions:
- Email Region (mandatory)
- Files Region (mandatory)
- Message Region (optional)
In the Email region we enter the email of the recipient(s). If there is more than one recipients we separate their email addresses with a comma. In the Files region we attach the local files. Those are files that are stored on our computer. We can attach them either by clicking on the “Select some files” button or by dragging & dropping them into this area. We can select more than one file at a time. Finally, the Message region is used to send a short message to the recipient(s).
Once we are ready to share the files, we select the number of days that the file(s) will be available for. The default is 1 day, but it can be up to 10 days. We click on the “Share Files” button and wait as the files are uploaded to our server. Once the process is over, we will see a message.
Mac Version
With the Mac version of the Rainbow app we can also share files that are stored on a Cloud Service. Even though the process is similar, in this article we will examine only the case of sharing local files.
If we have a Rainbow account we can share files with total size of 300MB (free version) or 10GB (paid version). We click on the “Share” button to bring the share dialog up.
We click on the “+” button to select the local files that we want to share. We can also add local files by dragging & dropping them in the white area. While we add files, that white area fills with the name of these files. We can right click on a file to remove it from the list.
Once we have added the files that we want to share, we click on the “Share” button. In the new dialog, we select the days that these files will be shared for. They can be available for up to 11 days. On the Mac, we can protect the shared files by entering a password.
The password is not used to encrypt the files, but to prevent unauthorized users from accessing your files. This means, that even if someone manages to guess the link to your shared files, (s)he won’t be able to access them without that password.
Once we are ready, we click on the “Next” button to share the files. When the files are uploaded to our server, the Email app will start. There you type the email address of the recipients. The body of the email already contains a short message, and you shouldn’t remove it. Especially, you shouldn’t remove the link to download the shared files. Then click on the “Send message” button to send that email.
Summary
The process to share a local file is straight forward. Initially, you select the files, then these files are uploaded to our server, and finally, an email is send to the recipients. That email contains a link to download the shared files. When a user clicks on that link, (s)he will be directed to the Web page that is used for sharing local files. But, now, the interface is changed, and (s)he sees the list of shared files.