Dropbox and H&M

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Hendrik
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Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Hendrik »

Hello

I've just installed the latest version of H&M (710) on my W10 machine.
When I opened my project, I got this message:
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The file "C:\Users\xxxxx\Dropbox\Help\Help_nl\xxxxxnl.hmxz" is under control of Dropbox. This can cause consistency problems. To avoid them the project is opened read-only.
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I did not get this message with previous version (709) of H&M.
Are there some intentional changes made in H&M when working in a Dropbox environment?
Or did I something wrong...??

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Hendrik
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Tim Green
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Hendrik,

Yes this is a new restriction to protect you. You should NEVER EVER try to edit projects stored in a Dropbox folder, or in any other kind of managed cloud folder like OneDrive or iCloud drive. Doing this can cause serious problems and potentially even data loss. These systems have quite basic version management controls that can very easily make a mess of your project. You then end up with a horrible mess of "conflicted copies" of your topic files and other files. It then becomes difficult or impossible to know which versions of which files contain the current versions of your data. In many cases, the versions you want may be spread across multiple different versions of the files.

It's OK to store backups of your projects in Dropbox, just don't try to edit them there. Help & Manual now makes this impossible to prevent disasters.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Martin Wynne
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Hi Hendrik,

Try AJC Active Backup if you want an instant backup of every edit. I've been using this for years and wouldn't be without it.

It may even be possible for AJC Active Backup to put its archive in the Dropbox folder, although I haven't tried it.

regards,

Martin.
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Tim Green
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Tim Green »

Martin Wynne wrote:It may even be possible for AJC Active Backup to put its archive in the Dropbox folder, although I haven't tried it.
I really wouldn't recommend that. The best place for the AJC archive is on a local server or an NAS, so that it is not on the same computer where you are actually working. For full security you can then make regular off-site backups of it somewhere else. A great solution for that is another product from AJC, AJC Sync. It synchronises any two folders between any two points, and supports online services like Amazon S3. I use it to make off-site backups of all my important working files on S3, but you can also use FTP to simply put the backups on your own web server.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Hendrik
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Hendrik »

Hi All

Thanks for the quick replies!
@Tim: found - indeed - this in the Help: "NEVER EVER store your working copy on a "managed" drive like DropBox, OneDrive or iCloud Drive!"
I always switch off Sych. when working at files who are in the Dropbox.
But I did not found in release notes the new restrictions, therefore my question. ;-)

Regards
Hendrik
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Ed Hawco
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Ed Hawco »

Wait... what?

This is the first I've heard of this. I've been using H&M and Dropbox together for three years and I've never had a problem. It works perfectly for me, and it's nice that I can shut down my computer at the office and when I get home everything is there, automatically, ready for me to pick it up again. I never have to worry about proactively synching anything, as it all happens on its own in the background. My entire workflow is based on this! (I don't always know in advance if I'll be working from home the next day, and with Dropbox it doesn't matter where I'm working; the files are always there.)

I'm glad I saw this before I updated to 7.1! It looks like I'll need to do a serious re-think of how I do things. :-( You might want to add this change to the list of changes for 7.1!
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Tim Green
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Ed,

You've probably been using the single file format (.hmxz), which is not really recommended for ongoing work, at least not for larger projects. You're much less likely to have serious problems in that scenario, particularly if you're the only person working on the project. However, even then you can still quite easily get different conflicted copies of your project in your Dropbox or other cloud folder. Because of this, we've decided to make this a blanket restriction. Working in cloud folders is dangerous and it is too risky for us to make it possible. We have seen too many users lose large amounts of work and we had to do something.

You can still get the benefit of synchronizing your work between work and home and away you have been doing, however. You can work in one folder and then copy your work to your Dropbox when you are finished. It would be a very bad idea to stay on an older version of Help & Manual because of this. That would be a double negative: you would have both the risk of working in Dropbox and all the disadvantages of working in an obsolete version of the program.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Ed Hawco
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Ed Hawco »

Thanks for the explanation. It's clear that I'll need to do a re-think. The method you suggest (copying files to Dropbox after I've worked on them) is not at all practical; I work on about 40 different projects, and I need to have full access to all of them, from two locations, at all times. Shuffling copies around every time I work on something is a recipe for frustration and maybe disaster.

I might switch to SVN, which slows everything down but at least it's reliable and I know how it works. Unfortunately, when I asked an IT guy about it recently he looked at me like I was asking him to install Windows 3.1 on my laptop. He suggested I try GIT, but for H&M projects and all the associated graphics, etc. that was like a Rube Goldberg machine wrapped in a Gordian knot. I'd rather be unemployed than have to deal with that.

Maybe I'll make another attempt at SVN.
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Paul Suderman
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Paul Suderman »

I'll add my name to the group that has used Dropbox with H&M for years. Maybe there was a problem, but it's not one that I ever noticed.

I tried to set up Subversion when H&M started supporting it, and I could not get it going.

Maybe I'll try again with Subversion, but I'm not super happy with this "feature" that I can't turn off.

Paul
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Ed Hawco
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Ed Hawco »

Apparently SVN is not an option here. Any thoughts on using Git? The idea would be to use Git to get the files from the server and to push them back to the server, and in between I use H&M to work on the files.

I don't really need the version control stuff. I just need a way to work locally while maintaining copies on a server (and the ability to push updated files back to the server for backup). I'm a lone writer, so this is entirely about not having all the documentation eggs in a single basket (i.e., my laptop).

Alternatively, is this something that can be achieved using the server version of H&M? I've read the documentation, but for the life of me I can't figure out how it works. The docs seem to say that it runs H&M "from the server" instead of locally, but what does that mean? Does it mean no local client application? Do you need to use some kind of remote desktop setup to work with it?
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Larry Nelson
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Larry Nelson »

I have also just upgraded to 7.1 and am not at all enthused to find I am now shut out of using Dropbox with my H&M work. I have used it for quite some years now and yes, from time to time there is a sync problem (and not just with my H&M work), but I've learned how to manage.

What is somewhat aggravating is to see that I have no choice. I feel that it would be better to make me aware of the potential problems with Dropbox, to inform me of recommended solutions, and let me decide what I will do.

It's a bit of Big Brother stuff. I'd go back to the previous version if I could.
Larry Nelson
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Tim Green
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Larry,

In the next update we are going to loosen the restriction so that you can edit single-file .hmxz projects in DropBox, but with a warning. Uncompressed .hmxp projects will remain read-only there, however, because it is much too easy to create a truly nightmarish mess that it is difficult or impossible to recover from. You end up with multiple '"conflicted copies" of many individual files and no way of knowing which versions contain the actual final text -- sometimes parts of it will be in multiple copies of the same file.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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olgarev_tw
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by olgarev_tw »

Hi,

I absolutely agree with Larry Nelson. The only 'nightmare' I got was to find out that suddenly, after the last H&M update, I cannot work with all my H&M projects at Dropbox. I have used this configuration for more that 2 years and never had any problems with 'multiple conflicted copies' or missyncronization. I wish I had this information before the update. I'll be really very grateful if you provide the users the opportunity to turn off this restriction.

Thanks in advance!

Olga
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Tim Green
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Olga,

The restriction will be removed for .hmxz projects in the upcoming 7.2 update. :)
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Andrew Strombeck
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Re: Dropbox and H&M

Unread post by Andrew Strombeck »

Is there no way to turn this off? I use Dropbox strictly for backup. I am the only person who edits my project on one computer, so there's no possibility of my files getting corrupted. It appears that my only choice is to go back to using H&M 6.
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