Files

Carbonio Files provides a file storage system with ability for sharing documents with colleagues, collaborative editing, and document versioning.

Items saved in Carbonio Files are shown in the central area and are organised in a folder structure, which initially contain a number of pre-defined shortcut as icons: Home, Shared with me, Trash, Filters, and Uploads. Files can be arranged in folders under Home; a list of recent files and folders accessed by the user is also available, to allow to quickly resume work on these documents.

At the bottom of the leftmost column you see the used quota, i.e. the total sum of the files you create or upload to Carbonio Files. The quota is updated with a little delay after a file is added or deleted, but you can force an update by clicking the icon on the right-hand side of the quota.

Working with Files

The following panels summarise the most common activities that can be done on files and folders.

File Upload and Download

• To upload a file to Carbonio Files, either click the Upload button on the top bar, or drag and drop a file from a file browser to Carbonio Files

• To download a file from Carbonio Files, right-click on it and select Download

While uploading new files, a badge shows the completed and total number of documents being uploaded.

Failed uploads will be denoted by a red icon along the badge. If you click it, the full list of failed uploads will be displayed. You can retry the upload by clicking the item in the list.

In case the upload quota is exceeded while uploading one or more files, a red banner will appear on the top of the window; to successfully complete the uploads, you either need to delete existent files or ask for more storage to the admin.

Note

The red banner can not be closed and will disappear only when there is enough space to complete the upload.

Create new Folder and Files

To create a new item in Carbonio Files, use the right mouse button in the file list (central area) to create new folders, documents, spreadsheets, or presentations.

Note

The following characters can not be used in folder’s name: Slash / Backslash \ Semicolon : Question Mark ? Plus sign + Asterisk * Percent sign %

Sharing

When clicking once on a file or folder, an informative box appears on the right-hand side, which contains multiple tabs:

Details

Shows a (partial) preview of the file, if the file belongs to a recognised type. There are also a number of metadata visible and a description of the file or folder can be added at the bottom.

Sharing

Lists the owner of the files or folders and who has access to it. It is possible to allow access to internal collaborators or external user, with different modalities.

• Internal collaborators: you can add a a collaborator to a single file or an entire directory by writing the e-mail address, then click the SHARE button. Otherwise, in the Collaboration Links section click GENERATE LINK to create a link that will allow anyone with the link to give either Read and Share or Write and Share permission on the file

• External users. It is possible to share single files or folders with external, anonymous users. In the bottom Public Links section use the ADD LINK button to generate a link to allow access to everyone. Optionally, add a description and expiration date (defaults to the end of the current day) to the link, then click GENERATE LINK. Anyone who receives this link will be able to download the file or to browse the directory until the link expires or is revoked.

  In case of a shared directory, any change in it (e.g., a new file or subfolder has been added or removed) will be automatically reflected in the link. Moreover, being a public link, files can be individually downloaded, but a bulk download of the whole content is not possible.

The SHARE button is clickable for internal collaborators and only if the e-mail address is correct.

Hint

Sharing a folder implies that permissions are inherited by the whole hierarchy underneath, so all files and directories contained there will have the same access permissions.

Sharing with external users is limited to files only: no directory can be shared. To allow an external user to access a file,

Versioning (files only)

The history of each file is preserved in case the file is edited or a new version is uploaded. Manual removal of unused or deprecated versions of a file is possible.

By default, five version can be stored for each file. Editing a file that has reached this limit is prevented, with an error message informing of the reached limit. This limit can be customised and even removed, by configuring it to -1.

Using multiple Carbonio windows

When using two or more open browser’s tabs or windows to access Carbonio Files, some of the operations you carry out on one of the windows is not immediately reflected in the other. To make sure that all the windows are synchronised, you need to click the account icon (rightmost icon on the top right corner of the GUI) to open the menu, then click Update view. In this way, you force the browser to reload and update its cache to include the latest changes on Carbonio Files.