I’m sure this topic has been covered but I’m unable to find the needed answers, so please excuse me if this is repetitive or tiresome.
This morning when I opened Pro Office and did the most recent upgrade, I’m informed that locating my database in the cloud is not safe. I’m instructed to move it and the program will not start without this change. I’ve used Dropbox as my database location for many years without any problem and need to have access to the synced database in multiple locations.
How is this issue handled? Thanks for any and all help.
The choice to make this restriction is because what you were doing is not data-safe (and never has been). We have many Support Tickets confirming this (and other software developers have issued similar warnings to their customers). As an analogy: I smoked for 25+ years and “got away with it” (ie. no lung cancer, emphysema, etc.) but I wouldn’t advocate I go back to or start smoking again (though I thoroughly enjoyed it).
If you are looking to Sync the device with other devices running DEVONthink or DEVONthink To Go 2, you would use our Sync plugin.
Sync is covered in the manuals (which can be downloaded here: Download Manuals).
Also, there are two Sync tutorials posted here:Tips and Tricks
Thank you for your reply. I have one problem and one observation.
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I am reasonably well-versed in the computer world running a small network at home that I’m able to connect with another network remotely to view video feeds and to manipulate computerized home control programs. Despite this I am unable to use your tutorials or instructions about syncing to get my database back into Dropbox and useful everywhere.
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The smugness of your reply is impressive. It’s my data, not yours. I would think this would be the central dogma of your business. Warning me is appropriate; locking me out of my own work until I move my database is quite another. Perhaps when driving a car you would feel it ok if a headlight or taillight goes out that the car freezes and refuses to start because, afterall, it’s unsafe. To use your own analogy to smoking, I’m unaware of any government which has outlawed smoking: warned against it, restricted its use in certain areas, yes, but outlawed? No.
Pretty angry.
What issue are you experiencing when setting up Sync?
No smugness intended.
Yes, it is your data but we have enough experience and evidence of people losing their data from this practice. We have warned people over and over and these warnings have been ignored. This obviously has lead to continued reports of damage and data loss, often occuring for people with no backups at all. (And in case you wondered, I find no pleasure or annoyance in these tickets. It is a troubling thing to deal with these losses and have no way to help resurrect the lost data.) So how do we deal with this problem, when all warnings are usually ignored or people are unknowingly jeopardizing their data? We now explicitly disallow it. We are indeed fans of having choices, but we are also concerned about protecting peoples’ data from loss.
Thanks for the offer to help fix my sync issues but, after some thought, no thanks. I’ve discovered how trivially simple it is to export my entire Devonthink Pro Office data base file structure to the Mac OS finder (including Dropbox.) It’s also pretty easy to write some little Applescripts to clip emails and web pages and store them in an ‘in-box.’ My Fujitsu scanner does OCR, so, no, I don’t want to spend a few hours fiddling with trying to sync a database program that doesn’t see that my control over my own data is the single most important factor in this relationship. All other features are secondary.
I’m sure that to some this will seem effete or pretentious but I’ve successfully and happily used Devonthink Pro then Pro Office and Devonagent and Devonagent Pro since 2007. I’ll leave now because you and your products have violated what I think of as a central rule in data management and have become unreliable and untrustworthy.