Dorico for iPad overwriting Dropbox files

Well yeah, but hindsight is always 20/20

If you haven’t removed Dorico from iPad, you could create a diagnostics report and post it here. That could help the team diagnose the issue.

Thanks. I did remove it (to avoid the file overwriting issue) but if I reinstall and see this behavior I will definitely do so. Good point.

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dtoub,
you received 12 answers of people (fellow Dorico for iPad users) trying to help you solve the issue. And (if it is an issue) trying to help the developers spot the problem - if there is one. You might know that the developers are monitoring this forum and read every reply.
Please appreciate, people try to help, (sometimes with quite an effort). If you collaborate, you will help not just yourself, but all other users who might read your thread, trying to find a solution.

Agree. Which is why I posted this in the first place :grinning: Lots of participation here, which is great.

David, did you finally find your project file on the iPad? Even if you have deinstalled the Dorico for iPad app, there will still be the local Dorico folder on your iPad.
You will need to use the Files App to have a look. Do you see your “lost” project there? It will have a slightly different name than your original file.

No. As mentioned, it does not exist


That’s really weird. Dorico should work in collaboration with Dropbox, and has so far. There had been some file saving issues in the very early time - because of the way iPadOS autosaves its files, but they seemed to have been solved as far as I know. It is of course possible, that with recently introduced iPadOS 18 something has changed and we have a new issue. Or Dropbox has changed something . It would be nice if we could get to the point of it…
If you at some point decide to give Dorico iPad version another go, things could be solved until then of course.
I personally use the iPad version only when on holiday, and I feel like proofreading a piece.

Agree it seems odd. Will soon retry and see what happens. I just finished the piece so easy to duplicate the file and see if the same thing happens. Stay tuned. Thanks.

Redownloaded iPad Dorico. I imported a copy of a Mac Dorico file and on multiple attempts with editing on both sides (Mac and iPadOS), everything synced. Now, there is no Dorico folder on my iPad; I’m editing the file that exists in Dropbox and it is working as anticipated (changes made to the file sync). I could not, this time, make a prior iteration of the file overwrite a later version on my Mac, which is good. For a bit, the iPad version showed the older iteration of the file, but eventually synced. Perhaps it was a weird glitch. Not sure where the iPad version is storing things in my case since the long (and truncated) file path points to a mobile documents folder that I suspect is intentionally hidden. But for now, things are working as they should re: syncing. Thanks.

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David, thanks a lot for the update.
Yes we need to know what is happening with our files. The iOS and iPadOS are having the concept trying of not bothering the user with file saving dialogues. Sometimes it feels as if they are somehow taking responsibilities from a person, like incapacitating people before they move into an old people’s home… Sorry for this drastic comparison.
Anyway, yes the “user/Library/Mobile Documents” folder is the one, where macOS, iOS and iPadOS store files which get synched via iCloud. It is the same location that is displayed as the top(root) level of the iCloud Drive.

I think that you have to create a project in Dorico first and Dorico will then create its local iPad folder.

The same is true for Dorico iCloud folder. You either have to create a document in Dorico for iPad on iCloud drive (by turning on a preference for that) or, much easier, save a project to iCloud from Dorico on Mac.

We can’t just create folders named Dorico manually, due to the way iPad and iCloud work. Dorico’s documents folder is actually stored inside Dorico’s sandbox while manually created folders reside in Files’ app sandbox or iCloud’s sandbox. It just appears to us that they are in the same location when we look at them in Files app or in Finder. They are only aliases.

In fact, we can create a folder named Dorico on iCloud and then do what I described above so that Dorico also creates a folder named Dorico. Those two Dorico folders coexist with no problems in Finder on Mac or in the Files app on iPad:

Only when we check them in the terminal, we see that they have completely different paths. The one we manually created is at

~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Dorico

and the one Dorico created is at

~/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~com~steinberg~iosdorico/Documents

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I had a suspicion that was the case. Thanks for the clarification.

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