Quicken with DropBox

The way I do it on my home network of three CPU's including one laptop is to use File/Backup and store the file on my main Desktop. When on my laptop, I restore from the Desktop and if any changes are made, I backup to the Desktop and then Restore to the Desktop. A royal PITA but I don't think there is a way to have Quicken directly access a file stored on another computer, another folder on the same computer or on Dropbox.

From: "Zaidy036"

My suggestion - forget the idea.

Protect your financial data. Don't put your financial data at an increased risk of exfiltration and compromise.

Using DropBox or any Internet storage is a *bad idea*.

IMHO

Arnie Goetchius wrote in news:n2v3tl$rps$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:

If your PCs are networked, why not just share the Desktop drive (or portion therof) and access the Quicken file directly from either CPU? (One at a time, of course).

rwwink wrote on 11/23/2015 11:04 AM:

Pardon my ignorance but how do you make that happen?

I have 3 desktops and a laptop that are on the same LAN but I have not been able to get drives shared.

Since this is OT, perhaps you would be willing to email me (remove "not" from "notgmail.com")?

Thanks.

All of my computers run Windows 7 with a Linksys router. Both of the towers are hard wired with cable. The USB backup is pluged into the other tower and the USB portable I use is pluged into my main computer. The laptop connect wirelessly to the Linksys router as does both printers. To connect everything, you have to be logged on as an administrator. You can then share the hard drives. Click the start ball (lower left in the tool bar), then click on "computer". That will show all of the drives on "your" computer. Highligh any drive and right click. A context sensitive dialog box will appear with "share with" somewhere about halfway down. Highlight that selection and left click. A flyout box will open with an "advanced sharing" dialog box. Highlight and click on the box and a tabbed dialog box will open with the sharing tab seleced. Both the drive letter and network path shown will be shown. Below that should be a "share" box for you to allow the sharing of the drive. Further down, there is another box with "advanced sharing" where you can set permissions for who or which other computer can accerss the drive. Anyhow, once you share the drive, your other computers should be able to see and access the drive. Just set the sharing for all of the drives on each of the computers and you should be able to read and write files from one drive to another as long as they're on the network. Currently, I have all of my computers, 2 printers and Roku all hooked to the network. If you have other questions or need more help, email me. snipped-for-privacy@spamwowway.com (remove spam)

On Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:07:52 -0500, Cy Burnot wrote:

I ran in to a problem with doing that having to do with the (optional) automatic backups Quicken makes when you exit.

When you exit, not yet knowing it wants to make a backup, Quicken closes your file. Then to do the backup, it reopens the file. The problem is that in that instant when the file is closed, Dropbox grabs the file for uploading, locking the file. Quicken does have the smarts to simply wait until the file is available again so it pops up an error that prevents the backup from occurring.

I couldn't find any way to get Dropbox to wait longer when it sees the file change.

So instead of editing the Quicken files in the dropbox folder, I edited elsewhere and used the program Allway Sync to copy it to the Dropbox folder whenever it detected changes. Buried in the Allway Sync setting is the ability to tell it to pause before starting the sync operation. I set it for 1 minute. Now when the Quicken file changes, it doesn't get copied to the Dropbox folder for 1 minute, giving Quicken enough time to finish its backup.

Bruce.

Why not save to your own location = DropBox?

Because of the way Dropbox opens the file the instant it changes which causes Quicken to error.

Bruce.

Then how do NewsTap and Excel use DropBox without problems?

On 11/25/2015 10:47 AM, Zaidy036 wrote: > Then how do NewsTap and Excel use DropBox without problems?

My guess would be those apps do not quickly close and reopen the files. Having the files quickly closed and reopened is what is triggering Dropbox to lock the file.

And unlike Quicken, the apps you mentioned may be programmed to wait for the file to become available rather that just popping up the error and aborting.

If Quicken did not quickly close and reopen the file on exit, Quicken would work great with Dropbox.

Bruec.

Back in the day, the paradigm for saving Office files required an explicit save (or a auto-save after a certain time delay). As far a I recall most pr ogram worked that way. Thus the warning each time you exited a program - Do you want to save .....

However, Quicken updated the file set (now one big file) each time you ente red or corrected a record. (And the records were flushed to disk pretty qui ckly.) That is why your data is very resilient to instances when Quicken cr ashes; i.e., you don't lose data entered in the current session.

As I see it, Dropbox monitors the directory, looking for files that are mod ified. I believe that each time Quickens QDF file is updated, dropbox goes to work, if you know what I mean.

I believe in its current form, Office invokes the Dropbox APIs which synchr onize file activity between each program and dropbox. Quicken doesn't do th at. After all, they have their own cloud sy$tem! Why kill and income stream ?!

I use Dropbox as a repository for my QDF file. I have a command file that I invoke when I begin a Quicken session. It copies the QDF file in dropbox t o my desktop. Then it invokes Quicken and points it to the QDF file on the desktop. When I finish my session (and I am satisfied with the session) I d rag and drop the QDF file on my desktop to dropbox. (Along the way I do inv oke the backup command from the FILE menu.)

In this manner I can access my QDF file from any of my platforms. The comma nd file is also stored in dropbox and I have a shortcut on my desktop. I ha ve one command file for each Quicken file I use.

Here it is:

----------------- echo on echo %COMPUTERNAME% rem pause if "%COMPUTERNAME%" == "VAIOFRED" copy /-Y /V %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Dro pbox\Private\Q\Home.qdf "%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Desktop"

if "%COMPUTERNAME%" == "SUPERCOMPUTER" copy /-Y /V "%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPAT H%\Documents\Dropbox\Private\Q\Home.qdf" "%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\Desktop"

rem pause cmd /C "%HomeDrive%%homepath%\Desktop\Home.Qdf"

------------------ As for the QDF files created via the FILE menu; I keep the latest three on a different cloud drive!

Fred J.

Another way would be a Batch to shut off DropBox, then run Q using file in DB's folder, backup Q file into DB, and then turn on DB.

From: "Fred Jacobowitz"

For any data file whose File Handle is held open for Read/Write access, and the file is avaible via TCP/IP, it is best served by a Mapped Drive. Any Internet file based system would then need to be WebDAV compliant. Using a specially crafted WebDAV UNC, one can map a drive and thus point the application to that Mapped Drive.

However, as I have stated before, using DropBox to carry financial data is a

DropBox does not support WebDAV.

I use boxcryptor which encrypts my data AND creates a virtual drive (X:\) for my storage. So I can share the Quicken file on any internet connected PC.

From: "Evan Platt"

That minimizes risk but not totally mitigate risk and doesn't address availability issues.