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Dropbox and/or Mac Syncing


Julia Falling

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I am currently syncing only with my Mac. Is it recommended that we sync either with Mac or with Dropbox and not both?

 

How is Dropbox syncing going for y'all? Back when I was having problems with Dropbox, I suspect it was because I was syncing with the Mac at the same time.

 

Info and advice?

 

Thanks.

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I have been syncing via Dropbox since Accordance 11 came out. I DO NOT use the "automatic" sync however and I have had zero problems thus far. I still copy my Accordance folder (in documents) and place it on my desktop BEFORE I sync and so far, so good! Between Accordance 11 and IOS 1.7.8 I haven't had any problems Julie.

 

Bob

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Thanks, Bob. And no Mac to iOS syncing? I think doubling up might have been responsible for my problems.

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I sync between my imac, MacBook pro and my ipad mini with NO problems!

 

Bob

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Hmm. Do I dare?

 

How about the rest of you out there? Using one, the other, or both?

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I only use Dropbox and have never sync'd since I have Accordance on my Windows, MacBook Pro, iPad, and iPhone (ios 8 on both). I've never had any issues with Dropbox.

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Hey Julie,

 

Usual disclaimers and so forth but I sync Windows to Mac and back manually and so far it's been fine. I don't have an iPad.

During testing I had some issues like syncing the current place in a book but I haven't been able to characterize that properly but all other aspects seem ok.

I am careful about trying to avoid having it invoke conflict resolution protocols as there is no (or at least little) change merge support only the ability to select one or other change.

 

My theory on manual sync is to sync at the beginning of using a session on one device and then again at the end, but I confess to not being rigorous about it.

 

I am now for the first time recently I began updating the same note and tool on different machines a bit (for real as opposed to testing) and so making sure DB has the latest copy at all times and that each machine gets that copy before continuing helps avoid conflicts. In theory that's what auto-sync should achieve I would think.

 

I do not auto-sync as I've seen too many people post on issues with it.

 

Thx

D

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When using auto syncing, I have had corruption problems. I would go Bob's approach and do a manual sync as well as back up before each time to be safe.

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I linked to DropBox from my Mac and synced.

 

Linked with my iPhone and synced successfully, but it had to be done in 'pieces' – it would get partially through and then crash. I'd do it again and it would get a little further. Finally, everything synced.

 

Linked with iPad and tried to sync. I could never get past 99% done with task 17 (with another 16 to go). I've backed up at the start of each new sessions on the Mac, and after each session. I've rebooted Mac and iPad. I've cleared download case cache and removed saved session. The DropBox sync still would not get past task 17.

 

It was worth a try.

Edited by Julie Falling
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Julie, I looked at your specs and you seem to on par with my stuff (except you have a much more powerful processor) but I am running Yosemite 10.10.1, and IOS 8.1.1 and have absolutely no problems syncing. Hope you backed everything up.

 

Bob

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Bob – Everything is most definitely backed up, and in multiple places. I've got one of those little, tiny USB flash drives that just stay in my MBAir – it has a 64G capacity. I zip the Accordance Files folder and then drop it in there. It's also in a folder in my DropBox. And on Time Capsule. And on a second TimeMachine disk. Does that seem backed-up enough? I'm really not paranoid. I just don't like to waste a lot of time redoing things and looking for things (my pantry and closets are organized for the same reason).

 

I keep all my software updated and also Mac & iPad/iPhone iOS. It really should work.

 

I've got a paper for Hebrew to get done so I'm not going to mess with the syncing today. I'll see if I can get it all resolved later.

 

Thanks for the support, guys.

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I am currently syncing only with my Mac. Is it recommended that we sync either with Mac or with Dropbox and not both?

 

How is Dropbox syncing going for y'all? Back when I was having problems with Dropbox, I suspect it was because I was syncing with the Mac at the same time.

 

Info and advice?

 

Thanks.

 

For the Mac, Accordance supports WiFi syncing of Modules and user content. For all platforms, Accordance supports Dropbox syncing of user content. Because of the overlap of user content syncing, Accordance tries to prevent WiFi syncing of user content if you are linked to Dropbox. Unfortunately, mixing WiFi and Dropbox syncing of user content can be very tricky and Accordance has trouble supporting both at the same time. We need to do a better job of giving a user a choice between the two and “preparing” Accordance when there was a change in syncing choice. iAccord now supports three types of syncing (WiFi, Dropbox, and iCloud) and we also hope to improve the choice in a future revision.

 

If you have a Dropbox account, then I would use WiFi syncing to manage my device module installations and link all of my desktops and devices to Dropbox to manage user content installations.

 

If you have not synced your devices in a while then there might be some installation situations that would confuse Accordance and make it difficult to merge.

 

Dropbox is great for propagating/managing user content installations to your devices. I use the Dropbox web interface/Finder to set the user content installation (make sure that there are not duplicates, etc.) all of the time for development.

 

If you don’t have any local changes on your iPad and iPhone then there is a recently added feature in iAccord that will help you propagate your user content installations to devices that have not been kept in sync. In the iOS system Settings app, there is now Accordance > Reset User Content. If set to TRUE on iAccord startup, all user notes, user tools, and highlight files are uninstalled and deleted from iAccord. If iAccord was linked to Dropbox, the synced status of these files is also forgotten, so that the next sync with Dropbox will reinstall the contents of the remote Dropbox folder.

 

So I would make sure the Dropbox > Apps > Accordance folders are setup the way you want (no duplicates, no unwanted sample content, etc.). Your difficulty with syncing your iPhone might have put some unwanted files into Dropbox. I would then quit iAccord on your iPad, Select Settings > Accordance > Reset User Content, start iAccord, and sync to Dropbox.

 

Let us know how it goes,

Mike

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I had recently synced between iPhone & Mac, and between iPad and Mac. However, I went ahead and removed saved session, cleared download cache, and reset user content on both iOS devices.

 

Rebooted iOS devices. Synced via DropBox. It went perfectly on both. Hurrah!

 

Then I synced with the Mac. As expected, User Content did not show up on the list of things to sync. Again, syncing went perfectly.

 

Sigh of relief. All the machines and software seems to be working as designed.

 

I will probably continue to sync w/Mac when there are modules to update or add, but will use DropBox for User Content.

 

Thanks, Mike. And thanks to the rest of you for the cautions and encouragement.

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Julie,

 

Good to hear that devices are now setup. I wonder why Accordance was crashing..

 

Don’t forget to look through your Dropbox > Apps > Accordance folders and make sure that there are no duplicates (User Notes/Tools with filenames that only differ by file extension). e.g. You do not want both My Notes.acc4 and My Notes.amynotes.

 

Mike

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Have no idea why I was crashing. I'm consistent about saving my workspaces after a session. I will add syncing to DropBox after the session, too. If I stay up to date with DropBox <—> Mac, I can sync whenever I think of it on the iOS devices. If anything weird happens, I'll report back.

 

EDIT: I had just re-linked to DropBox. There were no files there when I did so. I still checked to see if there was anything that I didn't want there and tidied up a bit.

Edited by Julie Falling
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