Sharing files on the web, with friends and family has always been an important task of any cloud storage and file sharing service. Sharing files with SkyDrive typically involves doing so via email. The plus point in sharing files via email is that the user has to directly paste the URL, without worrying how long that URL is. As we know, with SkyDrive, users can get a link to any file or folder and then send that link to friends or share it with the world. You can also choose whether you want your friends to edit that file, make it read-only or make it public so that anyone can view your public files.
SkyDrive has introduced some new changes that can help you shorten those long and ugly looking links. This will make those long links look good, short and simple. SkyDrive has made this possible with bitly. The new domain for shortened SkyDrive URLs is: http://sdrv.ms. Let’s delve deeper and learn how this is done.
Shorten SkyDrive URLs/Links Easily
Login to your SkyDrive account. Open the folder that contains the file that you want to share. Right-click on that file or folder and then click on Share.
This should pop-up a new dialog box. Click on Get a link from left side. Now you need to decide whether you want to give “view only” rights to the person to whom you are sharing the file with, give “view and edit” permission or make the public so that anyone can search and view your files, even the ones that don’t have a direct URL for that file. For this examples sake, let’s say you have clicked on Create from View Only section.
You will now be able to see the option to shorten that long URL. Click on Shorten to get a clean looking short version of the URL with SkyDrive’s own custom SDRV.MS domain.
Next, you will be able to see the shortened link which will look something like this – http://sdrv.ms/KUHop. Go ahead and share this short URL via email, apps or you can also write it down.
If you copy this short URL to Facebook you’ll see a nice little preview of that file. This is because SkyDrive now supports Facebook’s OpenGraph. Good riddance from the long and ugly links of SkyDrive.
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