Share Links are a feature your site can offer to your users, and every Share Link belongs to someone. The site-wide policy controls whether Share Links exist at all and who's allowed to create them. Per-link ownership controls who can manage, edit, or revoke a given link. Together they define how Share Links fit into your organization's broader access policies.

Share Links save time and effort for your administrators by letting your users securely share files over the web without turning to shadow IT. Shadow IT refers to employees using unauthorized software or hardware for work, which can improve productivity but creates security and compliance risks.

Each site has an Enable Share Links setting that site administrators can change. By default, this setting is turned on, because Share Links are useful for ad hoc, human-centric file sharing.

When a site administrator turns Enable Share Links off, no user can create new Share Links. Existing Share Links created before the setting was turned off remain available.

Some organizations do not want any user to create Share Links, usually because of an organization-wide mandate against file-sharing applications. Site administrators can deactivate the Enable Share Links setting on their site. Doing so prevents the creation of new Share Links for every user, including site administrators and users who already have sharing permission. Existing Share Links are not revoked automatically.

Even when Enable Share Links is on, a user must have sharing permission on a folder to create Share Links for files in it.

Once a Share Link is created, the included files are accessible by default to anyone with the URL until the Share Link expires, is manually revoked, or has its usage limited through its settings. Because sharing has broad reach, creating a Share Link requires that the user has sharing permission. This lets site administrators choose exactly which users can create Share Links.

Share Link permissions are assigned at the folder level. Only the users or groups you explicitly grant this access to can create Share Links. You choose which files and folders in your site a given user can share, and which they cannot.

If a user is assigned non-recursive sharing permissions on a folder, subfolders of that folder are not included when the folder is shared. Similarly, if a permission fence is placed on a folder below a folder the user has permission to share, the fenced folder cannot be shared.

A Share Link is owned by an individual user or a group. The owner has full control over the link, including the ability to edit, re-share, and revoke it, and receives the enabled Share Link notifications. The creating user's permissions determine which paths may be added to a Share Link and what allowed actions can be set for the link. Standard users can see Share Links they own individually and any Share Links owned by a group they belong to. Site Administrators and Read-Only Administrators can see all Share Links on the site.

Ownership of a Share Link lets standard users control the entire Share Link lifecycle without being granted wider administration rights. A line-of-business user who has mistakenly shared a file with a contact can resolve the issue without escalating to higher authority. They can review the access logs to determine what file access happened and disable the link themselves.

The owner of a new Share Link is automatically assigned, depending on how the link was created.

When a user creates a Share Link, that user becomes the owner. For automated Share Link creation through the CLI, APIs, or SDKs, the authenticated user owns the new Share Link, unless they are using a site-wide API key.

When a Share Link is generated through the API using a site-wide API key, the Share Link has no assigned owner.

Site Administrators have full access to every Share Link, regardless of who the assigned owner is. This includes Share Links with no assigned owner. Site Administrators, Workspace Administrators, and Folder Administrators can change the owner of any Share Link, including changing a group-owned link back to an individual user.

Owners of a Share Link who are not Site Administrators, Workspace Administrators, or Folder Administrators can assign their Share Link to a group they belong to, but cannot change ownership back to an individual user.

When a process uses a site-wide API key to generate a Share Link, the Share Link has no assigned owner.

Share Links without owners work normally for their recipients, and any Site Administrator can manage them.

Group Ownership

When a Share Link is group-owned, every member of that group can view, edit, re-share, and revoke it. This lets a team manage shared links without requiring site administrator intervention.

The Share Link edit page includes an Owner selector. A user can assign ownership of their Share Link to a group they belong to. Changing ownership back to an individual user requires Site Administrator, Workspace Administrator, or Folder Administrator access.

In the Share Links table, ownership is shown in two columns: User Owner for individually owned links and Group Owner for group-owned links. Site Administrators can filter the table by either column. Standard users do not see these owner filters.

A site setting in the Share Links settings, Default Share Links to Primary Group Ownership, controls the default ownership for new Share Links. When this setting is on, a newly created Share Link defaults its owner to the creator's primary group, if the creator has one. When the setting is off, or the creator has no primary group, new Share Links default to individual ownership. To assign a primary group to a user, edit the user's Primary Group setting.

In the API, Share Links are Bundles. Group ownership is available on the Bundle object.

You'll often need to update a Share Link after it's been created. You might want to extend the expiration for an expired link, change the password on the link, invite more contacts, or change its contents.

Both standard users with Sharing permission and site administrators can manage Share Links. Standard users see only the Share Links they own. Site administrators see all Share Links within the site.

Changing the Contents of a Link

A live Share Link gives access to its files and folders as they currently exist on your site. Share Link owners and Site Administrators can change the paths included in a live Share Link after it has been shared.

A snapshot Share Link contains a read-only copy of the files as they existed when the Share Link was created. Users cannot add or remove items from a snapshot Share Link after it has been generated. See Live and Snapshot Share Links for the full distinction.

Share Links that have passed their Expiration date move to the Inactive Links view. They are read-only and cannot be extended or reactivated.

Internal Name and Internal Note

Each Share Link includes an Internal Name and an Internal Note. Internal Name identifies what's in the link, and Internal Note lets you track its purpose.

The Internal Name setting answers the question "what was shared in this link?" When you create a new Share Link, Files.com auto-populates the internal name based on the link's shared content. If you create multiple Share Links for the same files, each link gets the same auto-populated internal name. Changing the contents of a Share Link after the link is generated does not change the internal name. The internal name can be manually updated.

The Internal Note setting for a link is a convenient way to track the link's purpose. A Share Link's internal note must be manually supplied, unlike the internal name.

Site Administrators can enable the Require internal notes site setting. When that setting is enabled, users must provide an internal note when saving a Share Link. Even when the Require internal notes setting is not enabled, Share Link owners can always see and change the internal note for their links.

Visitors to a Share Link never see the text for the internal name or the internal note.

When you revoke a Share Link, it stops working immediately and cannot be reactivated. The access logs, registrations, and recipient records for the link are kept and remain visible to Site Administrators.

A Share Link can be revoked at any time by a site administrator or by the user who created it. Anyone visiting the Share Link URL receives a "Share not found" message (or the custom Not Found message if your site configures one).

Share Links owned by a deleted user are still available to visitors, and site administrators can still manage those links. This serves two purposes: existing Share Link invitations and published link addresses keep working, and the registration information and access logs for the links are retained.

Removing all the links for a deleted user manually is a tedious task, so when you delete a user, Files.com prompts you to either keep their existing Share Links or revoke them all. Revoking the links stops them from working immediately. Their audit trail is preserved and accessible in Inactive Links.

You can also enable the Auto-revoke Share Links for deactivated users setting to revoke all of a user's Share Links automatically when that user is disabled or deleted, with no manual intervention.

Removing a user who owns Share Links triggers the Auto-revoke Share Links for deactivated users setting logic. When that setting is enabled, any Share Links owned by the user are automatically removed.

When the Auto-revoke Share Links for deactivated users setting is not enabled, Site Administrators have the option to re-assign all Share Links owned by the user they are deleting to a different user.

The Auto-revoke Share Links for deactivated users setting automatically deactivates Share Links owned by a user when that user is disabled or deleted. When enabled, this setting prevents Share Links from being used to bypass user access policies. By default, the setting is turned off.

For organizations with strict access control requirements in legal, finance, government, and healthcare sectors, this setting improves security compliance and reduces administrative overhead by removing the need for manual revocation of Share Links when users lose access.

Effects of Enabling the Setting

When this setting is enabled, all Share Links created by a user are automatically revoked when the user account loses access to the system. This happens whether the user is disabled manually or automatically. Share Links belonging to users who are disabled by the Disable inactive users setting are also revoked.

Enabling the setting also enforces that a Share Link's Expiration date cannot be set later than the user's Access expiration date. If a user's Access expiration date is moved to an earlier date, the expiration date of every Share Link they own is updated to match.

Ownership and Sharing Policy