Skip to main content
Question

Limiting collaborator ability to download files

  • May 22, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 20 views
C
Forum|alt.badge.img

We use Box to share files with our customers and need our customers to be able to edit those files. Ideally, they would only edit files using Google or Microsoft Online, and this is what we instruct them to do. However, our less tech-savvy customers often download the files and edit them locally, and then get upset with us because "Box lost their work." Is there a way to prevent folks from downloading a file while still allowing them to edit it?

I saw a post two years ago that said this isn't possible, but I'm hoping that something's changed between then and now (or at least there's a decent workaround?).

Thanks!

    1 reply

    C
    Forum|alt.badge.img

    Hi Sarah, 

    Welcome to the Box Community, I'm happy to help!

    A Box user's ability to download files would depend on their collaborator permission on the content that is shared to them. If you wish others to be able to edit the files you shared, you would grant them access an an "Editor" and editor access comes with the ability of the user to download files as you can see on this table of collaborator permissions. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to exempt specific action such as from being able to download content on this permissions and there is currently no option to customize actions for each permission.

    This idea has been shared to our Product team in Box Pulse -- our customer feedback page, however this is not on our roadmap. You can find this specific feature request here. Our product teams review and respond to ideas there so I would definitely encourage you to share your use can and your vote if this is something that you'd like to see in the future – we aren't able to implement every idea, but the more details we know there about the use case and the impact, the better we are able to prioritize it.

    Thank you for reaching out and let us know how else we can help!

    Regards,

    Terms of ServiceAccessibility statement