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Question

Easy way to get file or folder ID through Box Drive?

  • May 27, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 12 views

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I'm doing a lot of restructuring of my organization's data, and it would be very helpful to directly get the ID of a file or folder through Box Drive (or, essentially what amounts to Finder on Mac).

I know that I can currently do this through a manual multi-step process by right-clicking the file, selecting "View in Box", and copying the trailing digits from the URL that displays. But all these steps start becoming tedious after a while, and it also makes it tough to build in automations on my desktop.

I know there is a Box Drive menu item called "Copy Shared Link", but that's not what I'm looking for, as the link can be deactivated and is not a permanent reflection of the file or folder itself.

What I'd like to do is have a function on my computer whereby the input is the path to the file (or folder) on Box Drive, and the output is its Box file/folder ID. I can then use that ID in the Box API to run larger scale automated tasks. The function can be either called upon in Terminal, or if I get that far, I can also make it into an Automator Quick Action and assign a keyboard shortcut to, say, copy the file ID to the clipboard.

I've looked everywhere for solutions to this but seem to be coming up empty. Is there a native function that I'm missing, or is there an easy way to script this that I'm missing?

1 reply

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  • Author
  • Known Participant
  • 34746 replies
  • May 27, 2025

Hi Phil,

Welcome to Box Community and glad to help!

It shows that you're already working with a member of our team. Please keep an eye out and we'll stay in touch. 

Thanks for posting!