Newbie Question about use on shared (cloud) storage

Hello, I am only starting on the process of learning both the art of providing information about archival material and the joy of doing so with this software. So far, I am learning a lot and Tropy is helping a great deal.

Since I am doing this work for someone, I had thought to put the file and photos in a shared folder on Google Drive. I started out with a file that automatically saved to my laptop, but I want to move it to the shared drive so that my boss can look at it. I understand the limitations of working in the file at the same time, but was hoping that he could at least see what I was up to from time to time. I’m sure that someone has already answered this type of question and so apologize if I did not do a good enough job looking for that question.

Collaboration features and simultaneous access from multiple devices is something we’ve planned for the next major release; it is not supported yet unfortunately.

That said, it is possible to access the same project, stored on Google drive from multiple devices, but you need to be careful in how to set this up. It is crucial to understand that the location of the photos is stored in your project file using absolute paths: therefore, if you can set up your Google drive in a way that it can be accessed using the exact same path on both computers, you can use the project from both computers at the same time (just be careful not to make changes at the same time; and I’d recommend to make frequent backups of the project file just in case).

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Thank you for responding so quickly and providing a fulsome answer. My computer since had to be reformatted, and while my project file and photos are intact, they are, predictably, once more detached from one another. I will try to follow your instructions, but, having downloaded SQLite, I can see that it has been many years since I’ve even seen a command line.

I have a similar question about the possibility of sharing projects in Tropy and the specific technical details needed to set that up. I am using 1.2.0 and am trying to share my project with a collaborator using files in a synced Dropbox folder. We both use Mac. Right now, even though I am linking the photo files from Dropbox, my collaborator cannot open the full image in her Tropy. Do you know anything about setting up the path of a dropbox folder in Mac? Right now, for me Dropbox is a folder in my user folder, which I assume has a different name than my collaborator’s. Perhaps this is a technical question for dropbox…

If this isn’t possible to work out, I was wondering if a physical shared USB could move the project around. For this, would I just name the USB on my Mac and then it would have the same pathway?

Thanks for maintaining such an active forum- the previous answers have already been helpful!

Yes, when sharing the project over Dropbox on a Mac you wouldn’t be able to see the full photos on both machines, unless you were using the same username as Dropbox is typically setup at /Users/<your name>/Dropbox. It might be possible set up Dropbox at a neutral location, e.g., if you could configure your Dropbox to be at /usr/local/dropbox on both your machines then you should be able to share the project that way. If you do this now, you will also have to update all the paths currently saved in your project (the best way to do this is currently a one liner in SQLite).

Sharing via USB should also work if you can ensure the path to the device is the same on both Macs by giving the device a unique name. Again, you will have to update the paths in the project.

Please note that using the same project over Dropbox should be fine, but you have to be careful if you’re editing the project at the same time (or if you edit it while offline, and the other person makes changes before your computer goes online again) because it will be easy to create sync-conflicts on Dropbox. We’ll be looking to find a solution for this setup, but in the meantime please be careful and make backups of the project file.