When Ubuntu has restarted, click the Shared Folders icon on the lower frame of the VirtualBox window (the icon is a little folder).Restart the Ubuntu computer in the VirtualBox (restart is available in the menu at the top right of the Ubuntu screen).Install Guest Additions with the instructions here.This will be the folder where you can access shared files from Windows. In Windows, create a folder on your Desktop called UbuntuShare.You should follow these new instructions rather than those in the book. Since the book was published, Virtual Box has been updated to version 4 and the process of setting up a shared folder is a bit different. Otherwise, you will want to set up a shared folder that can be seen on both systems. Although you will need to have a network connection to sync and transfer files, it will save a local copy of the files on your operating system for use when you are off-line.

This will let you transfer any files placed into your special dropbox folder.

One simple approach is to install Dropbox in both your Windows and Linux environments. This will allow you to easily transfer files between the two operating systems. The hardest part of setting up Ubuntu within a Virtual Box is getting shared folders between your Windows system and the Ubuntu part of the operation.

Ubuntu vm shared folder