Overview

Box Drive allows you to navigate the contents of your Box folders from a desktop application. With Box Drive installed, you will have:

• Comprehensive access to your Box files and folders (not just those you opt to sync)
• More free space on your hard drive, if you are currently syncing large amounts of content via Box Sync.

Before you run the Box Drive installer, please ensure that all of your Box Sync content is synced without any errors. You will know a file or folder has not synced correctly if its icon has a yellow or red circle displayed next to it. If you experience syncing problems, you can find more support for Box Sync troubleshooting.

Files with sync errors will be moved to a folder on your desktop called Archived, and you will have to re-upload them to Box.

Box Drive installation

Managed devices will have Box Drive pushed via BigFix.

To begin your upgrade on a personal device, navigate to the Box Drive download.

Select the appropriate download option for your device’s operating system. Once it's downloaded, open the downloaded file to run the Box Drive installation.

When installation is complete, you will see:

• A new Box icon on your desktop
• A new icon in your apps toolbar

Windows

Mac

Windows

Mac

Working with Box Drive

As long as you have an internet connection, you can work with all your content directly from your desktop.

The first thing you will notice is that all your Box files and folders now appear in your Box folder, not just those you previously selected to sync. Unlike with Box Sync however, these files and folders (including those you may have previously synced) are not actually stored on your computer but are streamed directly from Box.

The second thing you will notice is that the dropdown menus that pop up when you right-click on a file or folder give you the same capabilities as the Box web app.

Folder menu

If you right-click on a folder, you will find the dropdown menu now has four Box options: View on Box.com, Make Available Offline, the submenu Share and Create a Box Note.

With folders you access most often, you can download a folder to your computer by right-clicking it and selecting Make Available Offline. This feature is only available for use with folders. As with Box Sync, please use this feature sparingly, as marking for offline will take up space on your hard drive. In addition, if many files are marked for offline access, they may slow down your system’s performance as they update.

If you hover your mouse over the Share submenu, you will notice three new options: 

• Copy Shared Link copies a link to share the file with collaborators to your computer’s clipboard. 
• Email Shared Link opens your computer’s default mail application. 
• Manage Collaborators automatically opens your default browser and navigates to your file or folder’s collaborator permissions menu.

Also within the selected folder, you will notice an option to Create a Box Note. Box Notes allow you to collaborate with others on a document in real time. However, take special care to never:

• Include UCSF PHI in a Box Note file
• Place such a file in your Secure-first.last@ucsf.edu folder, in which all files become encrypted.

If CipherCloud detects PHI in your Box Note, it will automatically encrypt it. Unfortunately, Box Notes are Box’s own web form file type: When CipherCloud downloads and decrypts the file, it cannot pass it back to the browser. If your Box Note becomes encrypted, neither UCSF IT nor Box support will be able to retrieve its information.

File Menu

If you right-click on a file, you will see that it has three Box options: View on Box.com, Lock File and Share.

• View on Box.com brings you to your file in your default browser. 
• Lock File allows you to block other collaborators from working on the file as long as you have this option selected, to avoid writing over each other’s work.

Unlike the web app, in Box Drive you do not have the option to lock a file for a specific duration, so be sure to unlock it once you are done making edits.

As with the Folder menu, if you hover your mouse over the Share submenu, you will notice three new options:

• Copy Shared Link copies a link to share the file with collaborators to your computer’s clipboard.
• Email Shared Link opens your computer’s default mail application.
• Manage Collaborators automatically opens your default browser and navigates to your file or folder’s collaborator permissions menu.