Greetings,
Once I’ve set up an auto-sync folder for a project, is it possible to set it so when I close the project and it does its auto-save, that it can also sync to the external folder?
That is not currently possible, not a bad idea, though it needs some work to make it seamless.
Scrivener works smartly in the other direction. If you load a project and it detects changes in the external sync folder, it will alert you and give you the opportunity to run the sync function.
Yeah, the import is flawless. I just know I’m going to have an “Oh. #&$&! I forgot to sync” moment when I’ve run away with my iPad.
It’s a great point—I’m just trying to think of how this could be accomplished without being annoying. I don’t think a sheet popping down whenever you close a project with a sync folder would be appropriate. That would be obnoxious for many.
What about a checkbox option when I set up the sync folder alongside the auto-import checkbox
Maybe in 2.5 or 3.0…
I was thrilled to find out Scrivener 2.0 new synching features, but since so many stuff has been said about the risks of saving Scrivener projects in Dropbox, I would like to know if it’s safe to use the “Sync with External Folder Option” with a folder in Dropbox, or if it’s still safer to keep zipped backups in there.
Thank you! (By the way, version 2 looks awsome!)
It’s perfectly safe! In fact this feature was designed with Dropbox in mind, since there are so many text editors on the iPad that can read from Dropbox folders now.
Oh! That’s great news. Have you already experimented synching a backup folder in Drobox between two computers? I need to share the same project between a Mac and a PC. With the new Scrivener for Windows… well, that would be a dream come true.
Depends what you mean by “syncing a backup folder between two computers.” The point of the Sync to External folder is access to your Scrivener documents outside of Scrivener, so you can, for example, export a document to be edited in Word and then easily bring it back into Scrivener to continue working on it. For that, yes, Dropbox is fantastic–you can access the files on another computer and even have another user (co-writer or editor) access them via a shared folder and make comments in another program that you can then easily sync back to Scrivener. And that obviously then works back and forth between Mac and Windows because you’re just dealing with .rtf or .txt files.
If what you mean is sharing one Scrivener project between two computers both using Scrivener–so sharing the actual entire project–then what you want to do is zip the file to Dropbox and pull it down to whichever computer you’re at, work on the project and then zip up the new version and send that back to Dropbox. (You could do it without zipping too, just be sure that you don’t have the project open on more than one computer or you can end up accidentally getting files goofed up by Dropbox, but Scrivener will give you a warning at least to let you know if you’re about to make that mistake.)
The sync feature only syncs the text of the file itself (and comments); it won’t keep all the extra metadata and be the entire project. So you’re not meant to use it to sync files between two Scrivener projects–that causes all kinds of confusion internally and you get a nice, jolly warning about it if you attempt to do that. But again, even if you did do that, you’d still only be sharing the text of the document and not all the extra meta-data–the Binder hierarchy and statuses and labels and synopses and so on–so I don’t think it would benefit you much anyway.