Get the projects.xml and Project Templates stored on Dropbox and updated on the fly
Thread poster: Richard Hill
Richard Hill
Richard Hill  Identity Verified
Mexico
Local time: 18:49
Member (2011)
Spanish to English
Aug 28, 2015

After a couple of challenging days of trying to achieve this I finally managed it, so am posting here.

I'm not very computer savvy, and I can't guarantee it'll work, but it does for me (so far), so might be worth a try. I'm not even too sure of how advantageous it is to have the projects.xml and Project Templates stored on Dropbox as opposed to their default locations, but I tried to do it out of curiosity more than anything. If you are going to try, then better make backups of all
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After a couple of challenging days of trying to achieve this I finally managed it, so am posting here.

I'm not very computer savvy, and I can't guarantee it'll work, but it does for me (so far), so might be worth a try. I'm not even too sure of how advantageous it is to have the projects.xml and Project Templates stored on Dropbox as opposed to their default locations, but I tried to do it out of curiosity more than anything. If you are going to try, then better make backups of all the corresponding files before you start. Also, I've only had this working since yesterday, so I'm not 100% if won't cause any crashes/problems in Studio. So you have been warned

This all started because having recently set up Dropbox on my PC and laptop and having reinstalled Studio 2014 on the laptop, I noticed that studio wasn't creating the projects.xml file because the path was wrong in the Sdl.ProjectApi.xml file for some strange reason, so I corrected that according to Paul's post here http://www.proz.com/forum/sdl_trados_support/233185-studio_11_how_to_change_location_for_projectsxml.html#2412953. He mentions that the path for Studio 2014 is c:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Roaming\SDL\ProjectApi\11.0.0.0\ So now, line three of the Sdl.ProjectApi.xml file reads:

It is essential that the files paths on both computers have "EXACTLY the same folder structure" as mentioned by Jerzy here: http://www.proz.com/forum/sdl_trados_support/211478-studio_2011_changing_where_files_are_saved.html

The next thing I did was move (not copy) the Projects and Project Templates folders from the default Studio 2014 location to DB and then created "reverse" symbolic links for these folders between the default location and DB. Symbolic links for DB are explained here: http://www.groovypost.com/howto/microsoft/make-dropbox-sync-any-folder-on-your-pc-using-symbolic-links/ One issue was that, as mentioned in the above post, if you "add any new files or modify them they don’t get synched [sic] until I restart the updating system", but the way to fix that is to "reverse" the way the links are created. So, in other words, using cmd as administrator, create the links as follows (including quotes and spaces):

mklink /d "C:\Users\[name]\Documents\Studio 2014\Projects" "C:\Users\[name]\Dropbox\Studio 2014 synced\Projects"

and

mklink /d "C:\Users\[name]\Documents\Studio 2014\Project Templates" "C:\Users\Richard\Dropbox\Studio 2014 synced\Project Templates"

You'll notice in "Step 6" of the symbolic link post, they have it the other way around, i.e. the Dropbox path is first and the system path is second, which is what I mean by "reverse" links.

"Studio 2014 synced" is of course just the name I chose to give the synced Studio 2014 folder in Dropbox.

So with that, the projects.xml file and the Project Template files should be updated on the fly, without system restart. I've tested it on a few projects, deleting/adding TMs and TBs on computer A, waiting a couple of minutes for them to update on DB on computer B, then opening them up on computer B, and vice versa, and no problems so far. Again, I'm not really sure how useful it is to have this setup, but it seems like a good idea.

Don't forget to back up your files if you going to try it, also, it never hurts to create a system restore point.

BTW, having done all the above, towards the bottom of the "projects.xml" it now reads:

...FullName="[user name]" UserId="[name of computer A]\[user name]"/>
...FullName="[user name]" UserId="[name of computer B]\[user name]"/>

Whereas it previously did not have the UserId of computer B.

Rich

[Edited at 2015-08-28 15:44 GMT]

[Edited at 2015-08-28 15:46 GMT]

[Edited at 2015-08-28 15:49 GMT]
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Richard Hill
Richard Hill  Identity Verified
Mexico
Local time: 18:49
Member (2011)
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER
I forgot to mention that both machines must have the same user name. Sep 29, 2015

Mine didn’t so I had to change it on my laptop, which wasn’t as straight forward as I’d thought. But here’s how to do it. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/19834.how-to-rename-a-windows-7-user-account-and-related-profile-folder.aspx

Also, rather than linking
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Mine didn’t so I had to change it on my laptop, which wasn’t as straight forward as I’d thought. But here’s how to do it. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/19834.how-to-rename-a-windows-7-user-account-and-related-profile-folder.aspx

Also, rather than linking certain files within the Studio folder, I link the entire "Studio 2015" folder, which has worked fine for a while now.

Lastly, don’t to open any linked files on the other machine until they’ve updated on DB, otherwise it will create conflicting files, but they don’t take long to update. Even if I update my 1.75 GB GDT TM with around 1.5 million units, it literally only takes one minute to update on DB. Other cloud services like OneDrive would need to re-upload the entire file, which could take a while.
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Get the projects.xml and Project Templates stored on Dropbox and updated on the fly







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