Dropbox syncing overwriting my User Notes

[Hrugnir]

Hello!

 

I use Dropbox on three PCs, my tablet and my phone. I use especially two of my PCs to an approximately equal extent, which is why I've tried to use the Dropbox sync function. I've set it to sync everything except Stacks, Papers and Current Session, and I've unchecked "Automatically Resolve User Note Conflicts" on both PCs.

 

The bug, however, is that User Note Conflicts are being "automatically resolved" anyways. I wrote a comment to a few Bible verses in the User Notes on one PC, and I must have somehow synced the wrong way around, because after syncing on both PCs, the version with the latest additions was removed and replaced with the older version on the other PC without even asking me to decide which version to keep.

 

Perhaps this is WAD, but if so, there should maybe be a warning that sync will overwrite files.

 

A question: What does "sync with Dropbox" exactly do? Does it upload the user notes (etc) from the current PC to Dropbox, or does it download the user notes (etc) FROM Dropbox and overwrite the local Accordance files? Or does it somehow do both?

What am I doing wrong?

 

Best regards,
Peter

[Hrugnir]

To clarify: I am running Accordance 13.1.4 on one PC and 13.1.3 on the other. Am now updating the version on the latter PC. But I doubt that could be behind the problem.

[Silas Marrs]

Let me answer your "What does 'Sync with Dropbox' exactly do" question first.

 

When you hit 'Sync with Dropbox', Accordance goes through every file it's supposed to sync, and compare 3 timestamps:

1. The last time this computer synced with Dropbox.
2. The last time the file on Dropbox was modified.
3. The last time the file on this computer was modified.

It then handles them a few different ways:

 

a.  If (1) is after (2) and (3), file doesn't need to be synced.

b.  If (1) is after (2) but before (3), the file on Dropbox is replaced with the one on your computer .

c.  If (1) is after (3) but before (2), the file on your computer is replaced with the one on Dropbox .

d.  If (1) is before both (2) and (3), both files have been updated, and a simple file replacement won't work.

 

For (d), Accordance compares the two note files on a verse by verse basis.  If they are different, and you have the “Automatically Resolve User Note Conflicts” turned off, it will bring up this dialog asking which version to keep:

 

 

 

I just tested and the Merge dialog above appeared as I expected.  I'm not saying you're not having a bug, but I'll need more info to find and fix it.

 

To me, it seems like the most likely thing to have gone wrong is that the process might mistakenly think you're in situation b or c, instead of d.  This could happen if (3) is wrong, which could happen if the system time was not set properly on one of your devices, or if some app besides Accordance is messing with the files.  Could some other app also be syncing the "Accordance Files" folder or anything in it with the cloud?