DropBox and iCloud

[HJKeats]

Hi,

I ran into some trouble back a few weeks ago, and I'm only now recovering. Sounds daunting, it really wasn't after I engaged the help of Leister technical staff (shout out to Gregg).

My database was acting up, to run a report took minutes when it usually took milliseconds. I have a Mac Studio that can accommodate most CPU intensive tasks. After Deb and Gregg massaged the file into submission all was fine.

Then I got Apple involved. My files were not syncing to my iCloud Drive. The only file that seemed like that wasn't syncing was the database file for family history. The status bar would note that zero bytes of 122Mb was syncing but it never did. Besides that all my files on the local drive never made it to the iCloud Drive. This is where Apple staff came in. No joking, I spent nearly three hours in th afternoon with no less than four technicians until it got escalated up to the senior staff. All the while they were in control of my PC. The senior technician, I could sense his frustration, but kept his friendliness and demeanour, spent about two hours straight trying to figure it out. The end result was, their recommendation, DropBox was the culprit and it had to be removed to solve the syncing issue.

They also recommended creating another admin account and start from there. I did that and I'm slowly getting everything back the way I had my environment setup on my Mac. Syncing for iCloud has been resolved and my family history database gets synced as well. I haven't turned on DropBox yet.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to setup DropBox and avoid the iCloud issue.

Thanks,
Hayward

[SGilbert]

Just the opposite for me!
When Reunion announced that iCloud Drive could be used with ReunionTouch, I proceeded to switch over.
What a total disaster that turned out to be. In my defense, I have 2 family files shared on one Dropbox account using 2 Macs; hers & mine.
My incentive was that Dropbox only allows 3 devices; we have 2 macs and 2 iPhones.
After all failed, I apparently made it totally worse by switching back to Dropbox. In the process, one familyfile absolutely refused to sync to ReunionTouch.
After 2 long days and numerous back & forths with Gregg here on ReunionTalk, I'm finally back to normal, but back to 3 devices on Dropbox--my ONLY complaint with Dropbox.

[theKiwi]

I am using DropBox for a bunch things, and used to have my Reunion files there, but recently switched to iCloud for Reunion.

The reason for this is that I'm using a 2023 MacBook Pro 14 with M2 Pro processor running current versions of Sonoma, and a 2012 Mac Pro running the latest version of Monterey.

Bloody Dropbox (probably with encouragement from Apple) have decided to change where the DropBox folder is to live. It always used to be in ~/DropBox, and so the path to it was the same on the 2 computers, and so when I exported a GEDCOM file with media on either computer, the path to the media was the same, and TNG was set up to deal with that.

But Sonoma now insists that the DropBox folder be buried away in ~Library/Cloud Services/DropBox. So depending which computer I exported the GEDCOM file from, the file contained different paths to the media.

Moving to iCloud fixed that.

I did recently see a warning on iCloud in the Finder that it spent some time synching something like 348 out of 370MB, but that cleared itself up when I made a change to the Reunion file in question.

Roger

[SGilbert]

Roger, you can solve that minor hickup by having an alias folder for Dropbox on your desktop. Always right there and easy to get to.

[theKiwi]

Roger, you can solve that minor hickup by having an alias folder for Dropbox on your desktop. Always right there and easy to get to.

That won't solve the problem of the paths to the media items being different if the GEDCOM file is generated on the MacBook Pro or the Mac Pro.

The problem is now fixed.

Roger

[HJKeats]

Thank you for your discussions on the pros and cons of DropBox vs iCloud. I'd like to keep it simple, iCloud only. Why introduce another layer of complexity. I wasn't aware that we could now use iCloud for Reunion. This is great news. Currently my folder structure on the local drive has Reunion folder inside the "Documents" folder so that this folder gets synced with iCloud. Is this the preferred method!

Also, just thinking about the Leister folk when they need access to the file for fixing, as they did for me, would they have a problem gaining access to the file if it sits in iCloud? The file is too large for email...

Thanks,
Hayward

[SGilbert]

Thank you for your discussions on the pros and cons of DropBox vs iCloud. I'd like to keep it simple, iCloud only. Why introduce another layer of complexity. I wasn't aware that we could now use iCloud for Reunion. This is great news. Currently my folder structure on the local drive has Reunion folder inside the "Documents" folder so that this folder gets synced with iCloud. Is this the preferred method!

Also, just thinking about the Leister folk when they need access to the file for fixing, as they did for me, would they have a problem gaining access to the file if it sits in iCloud? The file is too large for email...

Thanks,
Hayward

Basically, you can put the Reunion files anywhere---as long as you remember where! You already know where default is.
I was discussing using iCloud Drive for ReunionTouch, but you can, as said, put the files anywhere.
As to sending a large file to Leister (or anywhere), there are several large file transfer sites. I really like WeTransfer, and it is free!