All existing calculators in Dropbox will soon disappear from the web. You cannot host web calculators or smart web forms in Dropbox anymore.
If you’re using Dropbox to host calculators or smart forms for a website, the content will no longer display in browsers. You must move all the affected content to another web server before your calculator or form disappears from your blog or website.
Dropbox recently issued an e-mail to all its subscribers stating that the ability to make Dropbox content available on the web will be discontinued later in 2016. There has been no formal announcement on the Dropbox website or to the press.
Please note that this change will affect all Dropbox accounts. Your calculators in Dropbox will stop working on the date given in the e-mail. There is no option to pay extra for this service or to upgrade the account.
A: SpreadsheetConverter previously had a convenient click-to-publish feature that let users publish converted spreadsheets as live calculators on the web via their Dropbox accounts. Now, Dropbox has decided to discontinue this service, with very short notice.
A. There is nothing you can do. Dropbox will no longer serve your calculator and so it will no longer appear in your blog or website. Dropbox has not provided any options or suggestions to its customers. All you can do is to move the affected content to other web hosting platforms.
A: If you already have a hosting provider for your blog or web, and you use WordPress, we now offer a plugin to import spreadsheets into WordPress. Otherwise, you should look for another way to publish your content on your existing service. If you have been assigned an FTP login with a password, you may be good to go. Your hosting provider may also offer other ways to publish files on the web.
A: All your calculators or forms will disappear from the web pages where you have embedded them. Any web links to the calculators or forms in Dropbox will stop working. Your visitors will no longer be able to see or use these calculators or forms in their web browsers.
The change only impacts how shared files are displayed on the web. All your files will remain in your Dropbox; they just cannot be viewed with a web browser like files on a web server.
A. This is a business decision taken by Dropbox, and you must address all your concerns to them.
A: We are developing a similar click-to-publish solution specifically for WordPress, where the calculator or form is hosted on the WordPress server. We also consider developing a more generic solution, similar to the Dropbox connection we had in the past.
Begin by locating the e-mail that was recently sent by Dropbox to the owner of the Dropbox account your are using. It doesn’t contain much more information but it’s the only official communication we have seen so far.
You may then want to search the web for Dropbox discontinues web hosting to see the industry’s reactions, and perhaps find alternative ways to host your web content.
We will link to any official information about this below, if more information is made available.
We are really sorry for any inconvenience this surprising Dropbox announcement causes you.
