Learn Excel 2013 - "Import DropBox File List to Excel": Podcast #1689

If you like this content, please consider visiting the video on YouTube and subscribe to the MrExcel Channel to show your support!
This video has been published on Apr 16, 2013.
Fresh off the press! This morning Bill took the opportunity to do two things:

1. Further demonstrate the New Microsoft Data Explorer for Excel 2013.
2. Get a handle on his DropBox folder.

In today's Podcast, Episode #1689, Bill "MrExcel" Jelen discovers that his DropBox Directory is nearly full; without an adequate means to search through folders via the Web Interface, Bill resorts to the 'DropBox Client' that he has installed on his PC. Using the 'DropBox Client' Cache, Bill is now able to see his files. Now, with Data Explorer MrExcel kicks into action using the New Data Explorer Add-in for Excel 2013 with his DropBox cache. Follow along - and if you are having trouble with DropBox contents and you are running out of space on a regular basis, Bill has some information for you today as well!

...This blog is the video podcast companion to the book, Learn Excel 2007 through Excel 2010 from MrExcel. Download a new two minute video every workday to learn one of the 512 Excel Mysteries Solved! and 35% More Tips than the previous edition of Bill's book! Power Excel With MrExcel - 2017 Edition

And for more information on Excel 2013, check out "Microsoft 2013 InDepth" -- by Bill Jelen. Excel 2013 In Depth is the beyond-the-basics, beneath-the-surface guide for everyone working with Excel 2013. Excel expert and MVP Bill Jelen provides specific, tested, proven solutions to the problems Excel users run into every day: the types of challenges other books ignore or oversimplify. Jelen thoroughly covers all facets of working with Excel 2013. Excel 2013 In Depth

"The Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast Series"

Visit us: MrExcel.com for all of your Microsoft Excel Needs!
maxresdefault.jpg


Transcript of the video:
MrExcel podcast is sponsored by "Easy-XL"!
Learn Excel from MrExcel podcast, episode 1689 - Import DropBox File List to Excel!
Hey, welcome back to the MrExcel netcast, I'm Bill Jelen.
We're going to use Data Explorer again today, but to solve a real-life problem.
My real-life problem is my DropBox is almost full, they'll tell me up here I'm using 13.1 GB of 13.75 GB used, but they don't give me any good way to search through the folders.
And luckily for me I have the client installed, so all of those files up in the DropBox are actually stored here in a cache.
You know, this is the emergency cache, in case the internet goes down, I can still get to these files, but I'm going to use this.
So we have this this folder here, I'm going to copy that, and we'll go back to Excel.
Now hey, this is Excel 2010, in Excel 2013 you can get Data Explorer for free, before this I've written VBA to do this.
Also our sponsor "Easy-XL" as a utility, so you go to easy-xl.com and download the trial from there.
But let me show you how to do this with Data Explorer because there's one interesting glitch.
So we go to Data Explorer from File, Import metadata and links about files in a folder.
Ah, this is really cool, a nice thing that they added there, to the end of the From File.
Alright, so I'm going to paste the folder path and click OK, alright, there we go.
So here's our file name, and the extension, date, date, date, but you know, what's missing is the file size, and they have something here called Record, but that doesn't seem very useful.
But I did notice that there's a very interesting icon up here that looks like, I don't know, I'm going to call it the Expand icon.
So I'm going to left click that, and you'll see that there are a whole bunch of attributes, oh, this must be like a child record, or set of child records.
So I'm going to uncheck Select All Columns, and choose Size, and click OK, and we now get Attributes.Size loaded, click Done, and I now have a complete list of files.
And I can sort this, figure out which the largest ones are, which ones maybe I'm not using anymore, and use that to clean up my DropBox.
Data Explorer, beautiful new tool, it's still in preview but it's free, you need Excel 2010 or Excel 2013.
Hey, just a quick post-script, for those of you actually have a DropBox that's too full, here's what I discovered.
Once I had all that data in Excel, so 673.1 MB, remember that number.
If you have a shared folder, even if someone else created that shared folder, so Scott created the shared folder and shared it with me.
Now I always figured that was his file in his space, but that file counts against both of us.
So inside of here there is a file that's, you know, 300 MB or something like that.
And so what I had done, and what I'd been doing a lot is, I would choose that shared folder options, and say that I wanted to leave that folder, click Leave Folder.
Alright, and I never paid attention to the fact that the folder stayed there.
OK, and what's actually happened now, if go back and look at accounts again, the number of shared files and regular files has switched, but I still have 673.1 MB of files left.
So what I found I had to do was now, that it's no longer a shared floor, these are all personally in my DropBox.
Normally I wouldn't have wanted to delete this because I would be afraid that it deleted from the folder for Scott, but once you make it be not shared, then you can delete.
And now when you look at accounts, the file that you unshared actually out of the account, and I called Scott to make sure he still has the file in his DropBox.
So it's all just very strange, and if you ask to see deleted files, now it says that you deleted the shared folder, you know, which makes you think that you deleted it for the other person.
So it turns out I had 13 GB of files, most of those were shared, not even files that I knew were there.
I just had to leave those shared folders and then delete my personal copy.
Really confusing, more confusing than VLOOKUP when you get right down to it.
Alright, there we go, well hey, thanks for stopping by, I'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel!
 

Forum statistics

Threads
1,213,486
Messages
6,113,932
Members
448,533
Latest member
thietbibeboiwasaco

We've detected that you are using an adblocker.

We have a great community of people providing Excel help here, but the hosting costs are enormous. You can help keep this site running by allowing ads on MrExcel.com.
Allow Ads at MrExcel

Which adblocker are you using?

Disable AdBlock

Follow these easy steps to disable AdBlock

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the "Pause on this site" option.
Go back

Disable AdBlock Plus

Follow these easy steps to disable AdBlock Plus

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the toggle to disable it for "mrexcel.com".
Go back

Disable uBlock Origin

Follow these easy steps to disable uBlock Origin

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the "Power" button.
3)Click on the "Refresh" button.
Go back

Disable uBlock

Follow these easy steps to disable uBlock

1)Click on the icon in the browser’s toolbar.
2)Click on the "Power" button.
3)Click on the "Refresh" button.
Go back
Back
Top