Help Center

To use the service it is necessary to log in with you valid institution credentials to AcademicCloud.

After successful login you are at the “Home” level of your account and get the list of your folders as well as the menu on the left side.

Creating folders, uploading files

• Click on the '+'-icon next to the house icon on the top of the page.
• Select either 'Upload', 'Folder' or 'Text file'
• Select 'Folder', name the new folder and press Enter to create it.
• Select 'Text file', name the new file and press Enter to create it. A new editor window will open so you can start typing right away.
• Select 'Upload' to push files to your owncloud folder. A file dialog will open, select a file, upload will start immediately.

Deleting files, folders, restoring content

• To delete an individual file open the '…'-menu and click 'Delete'. The file will be deleted immediately and disappear. Keep in mind that this also affects clients connected to this folder.
• To delete multiple files at once use the checkbox on each file's icon and select them. Then click the 'Delete' icon in the top right corner. The files will be deleted immediately and disappear.
• To recover a recently deleted file click on the “Deleted files” with the trash bin icon in the bottom left corner of the screen. Clicking on the circle arrow will restore the file immediately. This also effects connected clients.
• To permanently remove a recently deleted file click on the “Deleted files” with the trash bin icon in the bottom left corner of the screen. Open the '…'-menu and click 'Delete'. The file will be deleted permanently and disappear.
• These actions also apply to directories. Connected clients will also delete the folder and remove all files. Use Caution: Even if a folder can be resored on the server, all clients will have to download it again.

Content can be shared with specific users or anonymous access can be granted. Invite users to folders

• To start sharing a folder or file with another user click on the “Share” icon (it can also be found by opening the '…'-menu, clicking 'Details' and selecting the 'Sharing'-tab to the right of the screen).
• You see a list of users that have access to this file or folder. To share it with a new user enter his or her email address. Note that by default the new user gets Read/Write access to the shared item and receives an invitation email.

Share contents through links

• To start sharing a folder or file with another user click on the “Share” icon (It can also be found by opening the '…'-menu, clicking 'Details' and selecting the 'Sharing'-tab in the right of the screen).
• Click the 'Share link'-checkbox to generate a link. You can set a password by using the 'Password protect'-checkbox.
• The link can be sent via Email by the owncloud server with the 'Email link to person'-field.
• An experation date for the link can be set.

Note that disabled or expired links are not deleted, only access to the shared content via link is removed.

  To get an overview of your shared links and to remove them visit “Shared with others” in the menu on the left. To see what others have shared with you click 'Shared with you'.

You can read the official manual for the ownCloud service online or download is as PDF.

Q: Individual files are not downloaded to my Windows PC, but I can see them in the cloud. What could be the reason?

Check if the file name in the cloud ends with a space or contains any of the following characters:

• < less than, angle bracket on
• > more than, angle bracket closed
• : Colon
• “ double quotation marks
• / slash
• \ backslash
• | pipe
• ? Question mark
• * Asterisk, asterisk

Windows cannot create file and directory names with a space at the end and one (or more) of these characters, so the ownCloud client cannot sync them. Also Unicode characters may cause this problem. This problem can occur when working with Mac OS or Linux operating system users, as these devices can create such files.

To fix the problem, rename the file(s) in the GWDG ownCloud web page, the client will download them at the next sync.