Problem Sharing iCloud Drive -- "Invitation Couldn't Be Sent" Error

Question

Problem Sharing iCloud Drive -- "Invitation Couldn't Be Sent" Error

i went into my icloud account online (icloud.com) and tried to send an email to my wife's email address (that's on our family share plan) in order to share one of the folders in my iCloud Documents folder with her ... i got an error that said the share invitation couldn't be sent (i retried it several times ... logged-out, then in, etc.) but i keep getting this error and am not able to share my icloud folder ... any help would be much appreciated.

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Apr 6, 2020 12:18 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Steven Gatoff Author

Level 1

6 points

Apr 30, 2020 8:07 PM in response to Steven Gatoff

hey everyone, thanks for the notes/confirmations ... what i learned from troubleshooting on one of those hour-long phone calls with apple support is that it was a sub-folder in the folder that i wanted to share that was 110GB (~20K photos) that was mucking it up; when i moved that it all worked fine (i transferred the photos with a hard drive) ... agreed though that it's lame that you can do this on dropbox no problem but icloud bombs. maybe someday ... but like the grounds-keeper in Rudy said, "ain't gonna be this day."

thanks all and stay healthy.

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Answer 2

Blaeu

Level 1

4 points

May 1, 2020 1:02 AM in response to Steven Gatoff

Here's a workaround:

Create a new folder on iCloud Drive, share it, then move the content of the original folder into it.

Delete the original directory, and rename the new one to use the original name.

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Answer 3

MoonJ.

Community Specialist

Apr 9, 2020 5:39 AM in response to Steven Gatoff

Hello Steven Gatoff,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. It sounds like you're having trouble sending an iCloud Drive folder sharing invitation to your wife. I'd be happy to provide information that may help.

In order to share a folder in iCloud Drive, you'll need macOS Catalina 10.15.4 or later: How to upgrade to macOS Catalina.

If you have macOS Catalina installed, try restarting your Mac: Log out, sleep, restart, or shut down your Mac.

Also, take a look at the information in these article about sharing folders with iCloud Drive:

Take care.

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Answer 4

Blaeu

Level 1

4 points

Apr 26, 2020 4:53 AM in response to carlpenn

Made a similar observation. Works fine for smaller folders, always fails for larger folders. It looks like a time-out when preparing the directory for sharing.

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