Now that I have Dorico on my iPad, and Dorico 4 on my desktop and laptop, the issue of universal access to files/projects comes into play. I searched and found a little bit of ‘old suggestions (ie: 2016, 2019)’, but nothing current. I don’t see any recommendations in the v4 manual either, but for once I’m actually trying to do something the right way before I have to back peddle and fix my wrong decisions.
Any suggestions/recommendations appreciated.
With Dorico now always accessible, I’m afraid I will no longer have excuses for completion dates! Looking very forward to digging into v4.
I keep my Dorico projects on the iCloud Drive space, so I can access them from my desktop and laptop computer.
Just started to play around with the iPad App, where one can open, edit and re-export to the original destination. So far it works well.
Thanks @k_b,
In those earlier treads I referenced, @dspreadbury’s response was guarded, but I suspect as the practice has become more commonplace, it has also become more stable. I’ll continue exploring.
I’ve been thinking about this, but have a Windows 11 desktop, plus a Macbook Pro and iPad. Is iCloud OK on Windows or would Dropbox be a better option?
I use the desktop Dorico the vast majority of the time. The iPad version is really handy when out of office, but darn if I can remember how to transfer files. Here’s what I recall:
Open file from iCloud
Dorico says it’s read-only
Make changes, it’s (usually?) autosaved, but I make sure by pressing the back-arrow button at top left
… now, how do I get it back into iCloud? I don’t think you can do this from Dorico, but have to use the iPad’s “File” app???
Hi again, @ChrisW and @rubberfingers both bring up some of the exact points that make me want to do it ‘right’ (whatever that means). For my use, I can see the iPad as potentially useful, but its use will be more ‘occasional’ and not as significant in my day to day use. I want to be able to be confident that it will ‘just work’ and not distract me through the dreadful ‘How do I do this again?’.
You use the Share button directly in the Dorico iPad App and save to the same location it came from in the first place.
My use case scenario yesterday: I discovered a typo in the lyric line in one of my projects. So I went and opened that project on iPad Dorico App by using the Import button. I fixed the little typo and then via the Share button>Dorico Projekt saved it to its original iCloud destination.
Oh yes, thank you.
An odd thing happened though yesterday (when I tried this procedure for the first time). When I tried to export to the same location on the iCloud, Dorico gave me a warning of an existing file with the same name. I choose to overwrite it. So far everything as expected. When I later looked into the folder where I saved the project file to, I had two files with exactly the same name, something I did not think was possible…
Chris, there is one thing we must be aware of, if we use a cloud service on more than one machine: also corrupted files will get synchronised…
As an example: I had transcribed 8 symphonies from original ms. and stored the (then still Sibelius) files in a Dropbox folder. Two years later my employer suggested we could use these symphonies for an edition - he had found publisher in the mean time. I went to my Dropbox folder - and found corrupted files with 0kB
I looked on my others devices - and everywhere the files had 0kB - because they had synchronised…
We’re definitely planning to add support for iCloud Drive and iCloud more generally in Dorico across macOS and iPadOS as soon as we can, as well as “open in place” support on the iPad, which will hopefully make a lot this smoother.
Dorico for iPad cannot save files in place, i.e. they are always copied to the app’s own private storage area, and you have to “share” them back where they came from manually, which is obviously workable but a bit annoying. That’s why adding both “open in place” support and iCloud support will help to make this workflow smoother – but it needs to be done in concert in both the iPad and macOS versions, or else there could be big problems with you accidentally overwriting the file you’re working on from the other platform.
As @k_b says, iCloud Drive is not a substitute for a backup - it just syncs your files across your devices, so deleted files get deleted from all devices; corrupted files get corrupted everywhere.
A local, independent backup that contains ‘snapshots’ of your disk at a given time is essential.
I believe DropBox has some recovery of deleted files and versioning, but again I would only consider that as an addition to my own backup. Belt and braces!
