How to sync Beersmith files with Dropbox

What's Dropbox?

Dropbox is an online service for synchronising files across multiple computers automagically and also sharing files with people you know. You get it from http://www.dropbox.com and it's free.


Dont' you just add your Beersmith files to your dropbox folder?

No. Beersmith's "Change Documents Directory" option doesn't really work and seems to always want to stick your files in your "My Documents" folder.


So how do you do it then?

Here's how:

1) Set up your dropbox account and folder (e.g. C:\Dropbox)
2) Take a copy of your Beersmith folder (usually C:\Users\<username>\Documents\BeerSmith2) and keep it safe.
3) Take another copy of your Beersmith folder and drop it into your dropbox folder. You now have e.g. C:\Dropbox\BeerSmith2.
4) Delete, yes delete, your existing Beersmith folder and all its contents
5) Create a symbolic directory link which replaces your old Beersmith folder with a link to the files in dropbox
a) Open a command prompt window (windows key + "r" to bring up the "run" box, type "cmd" then enter)
b) Change directory to where your BeerSmith folder was: e.g. "cd \users\<username>\Documents"
c) The syntax of the symbolic link is: "MKLINK /D linkname target"
d) In this example the command would be: "MKLINK /D BeerSmith2 C:\Dropox\BeerSmith2"

And that's it! You have to do it this way round as Dropbox gets a bit funny about the symbolic link - it needs the real files to work properly. BeerSmith on the other hand just gets on with the symbolic link and works perfectly (so far).


The process for your other PCs is pretty much the same:

1) Install dropbox and link it to your account.
2) Let it download all the files from the server.
3) Install BeerSmith
4) Delete the C:\users\<username>\BeerSmith2 folder
5) Create the symbolic directory link to the folder in your Dropbox folder

WARNING! Although this will keep your files in sync across multiple PCs, don't try to use BeerSmith on multiple PCs at the same time! You'll end up with conflicted files and all kinds of mess. (...and that would probably be contrary to their licencing anyway. Most software houses are fine with a single user using multiple installations on different devices because really you can only use one instance at any one time)

:thumb:

Absolutely awesome! Cheers mate. :clap:
I've tried doing this before but run into problems, but this works great. I'll be trying this on my linux netbook later as it should work in the same way.

Should work exactly the same on linux (if not better - symbolic links are pretty new to the windows platform as far as I can make out where they've been in UNIX/Linux for ever and a week). :thumb:

Thanks I have been having a right mare trying to share files between the PC and brewery netbook! :thumb:

I see that version 2.1 has been announced for May. It will include a "cloud" facility to keep your recipes on their server so you can share them across different machines.

You will also be able to share them with others and download other people's recipes.

I use the change documents directory setting, but then again I'm on ubuntu so maybe its just a windows thing with it not working. Lol just managed to screw all mine up though I opened beersmith before dropbox had finished syncing thank f**k for drop box saving previous versions Looking forward to the new version

My beersmith wont up date. Crashes with the new update. Maybe the new one will sort it out?

Mine keeps asking me to update but brewing tomorrow so gonna leave it lol