Sunday 5 November 2017

Downloading from MEGA can't find files

MEGA (http://mega.nz) is a cloud storage like DropBox but it gives users a huge 50 Gigglebites of storage with a FREE account.  Of course, the free account comes with a few limits on usage, and additional storage and relief of limits on bandwidth can be purchased at a reasonable cost.

However.  One big problem is that the desktop interface of MEGA does not allow users to set a download path.  Googling on this problem shows that a lot of people complain about this.  Apparently it is something to do with the encryption of data in transit.  Whatever the reason it is irritating to see the download happening, then not be able to find what could be several Gigs of files you have just downloaded.

Having just gone through this again I thought I might write a reminder for when I forget how to do it again next time.

1 - find the Parent folder you want to download in the Left hand pane of the 'CLOUD' section of MEGA.
2 - Either right click on That folder, or right click on one the child folders in the Right Pane

3 - Choose 'Get Link' and click the COPY button.
4 - Open a New Tab in your web browser and paste the link into the Address Bar (You can usually right click the Address Bar and choose 'Paste and Go'.
5 - Once your computer decrypts the files you should end up with your screen looking like this (obviously you will have different files)
6 - Click Download as zip at the top right, the progress bar will show on the left while MEGA zips your file.
7 - When prompted, choose your Download destination Folder.

This seems like a complicated way to do what should be a simple right click operation, and if you can simply right click what you want to download, and find it after the download completes - Then you really don't need to be here.

BUT !!!  If you are sick of wondering where your supposed downloads got to, the little bit of time spent doing it this way can save you from hours of fruitless searching of your drive and Googling for answers.  At today (5th Nov 2017) I have not seen anyone else with an answer that works.