[wthalliii]

I have a couple of PC's and a Microsoft Surface, all running MobileSheets Pro. I have a large collection of songs. When I add a song or change annotations, I do that on one copy of MobileSheets, and then sync it to the other computers. But that takes a fair amount of time. 

What I'd like to be able to do is to have the changes shared automatically. I have an account with PCloud that allows me to create a folder that is automatically synced with the cloud. My idea is to load the library and annotations, and I guess the database, into one of these special folders with one copy of MobileSheets. Then I'd create that same kind of folder on the other computers, so the files would now be copies of what is on the first computer. Then, I'd somehow tell those copies of MobileSheets to just use the existing library, annothations, and database that were created by the first PC. 

Is there a way to do this? Well, not necessarily as I've envisioned it. A way to have changes on one copy of MobileSheets automatically appear on another copy.

 Thanks.

[Zubersoft]

If you can synchronize the C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Packages\41730Zubersoft.MobileSheets_ys1c8ct2g6ypr\LocalState folder between devices (and that's the storage location you have listed under Settings->Storage->Set MobileSheets Storage Location), then yes, you could accomplish what you are describing. You would just need to perform a file sync on each device to get the latest database file and any new or modified song files. The database file must be loaded in that directory (it's a limitation of the SQLite library for UWP applications), so at the very least you have to sync that file. If you want to sync multiple folders, then you can use whatever folder you want as the storage location.

Mike

[itsme]

With relative paths and well-considered directories this works fine for me even between Win10 and Android!
You did an excellent job, Mike.

[BRX]

I can confirm that, too. Actually I only sync my mobilesheets.db beetween my devices.

I've used an automatic sync before but I switched to syncing the dbs to each other devices to separate folders and copying the db manually into the right directory.
I had a few occurances when I didn't close MPS so it didn't save the database or had a crash that sometimes the database was not found or recognizes so I had to use a backup. 

Maybe I'll try live syncing again some time. For now I stick with the additionally step for safety reasons.

[wthalliii]

Thanks, good information.

If I switch the location of the library to a location that already has content, will MobileSheets just use the information that's there, or will it always copy stuff? Also, I'm assuming that the database has the absolute path of the library. So the shared folders would have to have the same path on each of the synchronized machines. Also, the cloud synchronization software I have links to a drive, not to a path, so I guess I'll have to copy the database to and from the synchronized drive and C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Packages\41730Zubersoft.MobileSheets_ys1c8ct2g6ypr\LocalState. At least that will be faster than a full sync. I'll have to think about how to always make that happen when I start and then exit Mobilesheets. Maybe a batch file would work. It would need to copy the database from the synced drive to the AppData subfolder, then do MobileSheets, then copy it back. It's hard to get batch files to do something when a GUI app ends, though.

Mike, would you consider adding a feature to Mobilesheets to call a program / batch file at startup, and another one at exit?

[Zubersoft]

You can launch MobileSheets from the command line, just run this: explorer shell:AppsFolder\41730Zubersoft.MobileSheets_ys1c8ct2g6ypr!App

You can check to see if it waits until the application exits before triggering the rest of the batch file. If so, your desire to copy the database to/from should work fine. 


Mike

[wthalliii]

My experience is that a batch file does not wait for a gui program to end, but I'll try this all out when I have time.

Thanks for your help.

[wthalliii]

Just wanted to report back on this method of sharing libraries using a cloud account. I did not have to use a batch file because as it turns out, my cloud account, pcloud, will synchronize any particular folder with the cloud. So I was able to synchronize the C:\Users\<your username>\AppData\Local\Packages\41730Zubersoft.MobileSheets_ys1c8ct2g6ypr\LocalState folder. And it works great.

There's only one minor gotcha. If you open MobileSheets on more than one device at a time, you can potentially lose changes. At least that's true with pcloud. When the first device opens the files, they are locked, so when another device tries to close, the system can't write the changes you made.

If anyone else is using pcloud and wants more detail about exactly what I did, just ask.

Thanks again for the help. MobileSheets works great for my music.

[wthalliii]

Well, a further report back after using this method for a few weeks. At first, it worked great. But then I started getting error messages from MobileSheets that the database file didn't exist and requesting permission to restore a backup database. That would bring the database back, though. Then there was the minor annoyance that the banner announcing features for a new version came up every time except for just the first time. I'm guessing some file was being deleted by MobileSheets and then being restored by the sync. So, it was working pretty well with a few minor glitches.

Then, a couple of days ago, changes I made stopped appearing on other copies. I looked in my cloud account, and I found lots of files with the word "conflict" and a number appended to the name. I think that perhaps the syncs weren't happening fast enough to prevent having two computers trying to write copies of files at the same time. Perhaps I was not waiting long enough or something. But with my cloud account, there's no easy way to tell when it's synced.

So, I have abandoned trying to use the system this way. It was a good try, and I wish I could figure out a better way that was easy to use. At this point, I have gone back to manually syncing the copies of my songs that I have on four machines. I just have to remember that after I make changes on one computer, to sync it with the other three.