tag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:/discussions/general-questions/116608-using-common-data-file-across-both-mac-pc-platformsInfinite Kind: Discussion 2022-02-21T08:10:18Ztag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/495018202021-11-21T19:22:30Z2021-11-21T19:22:30ZUsing Common Data File across both Mac & PC Platforms<div><p>Hi Steve,</p>
<p>The Moneydance data file is OS-neutral. It doesn't care which OS you open it with.</p>
<p>e.g. I dual-boot Windows and Linux on my laptop. I sync Moneydance on Windows with Linux via a shared folder in Windows. I realize this is nothing like the setup you're looking to create but it does illustrate the neutrality of the data file.</p>
<p>-Kevin N. (not a member of MD support)</p></div>-Kevin N.tag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/495018202021-11-21T20:09:31Z2021-11-21T20:09:35ZUsing Common Data File across both Mac & PC Platforms<div><p>You say that you have moved your “Data File on iCloud”. I hope you mean that your sync folder is on iCloud & not your actual DataSet. This should always reside on a local hard disk.</p>
<p>The ability to use the in built MD syncing via iCloud is only available on the Mac version. It is not available on either the Windows or Linux version of MD</p>
<p>Fellow user</p></div>jeff_ltag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/495018202021-11-21T20:25:50Z2021-11-21T20:25:50ZUsing Common Data File across both Mac & PC Platforms<div><p>The above information is correct. If you want to share data across multiple platforms, you'll need to use a service that works on all those operating systems. If you only have Mac products, then moving to iCloud at some point won't be a problem. But if you're using multiple platforms, Dropbox is still probably the best option, since they've continued to support most major platforms for years.</p>
<p>Ethan<br>
Infinite Kind Support</p></div>Ethantag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/495018202021-11-21T22:04:15Z2021-11-21T22:04:19ZUsing Common Data File across both Mac & PC Platforms<div><p>Ethan,</p>
<p>Thank you for your reply but I have a couple of questions</p>
<p>I've chosen to store my working data files (i.e., Excel, Word, etc.) on<br>
iCloud and can currently access (read & write) these files via both my Mac<br>
and PC devices. I haven't had any conflicts editing and saving a file on my<br>
Mac and later accessing, editing, and saving the same file in the future on<br>
my PC. In short, it's device agnostic which gives me alot of flexibility.</p>
<p>My original question is focused on attempting the same thing with my MD<br>
data. Honestly, I'm a tad confused by the distriction between Dataset and<br>
Synching files and don't really know how to tell which is which. I just<br>
assume that this "device agnostic" approach wasn't compatible with MD.</p>
<p>I hope my description isn't too confusing.</p>
<p>Steve</p></div>Steve Kopplintag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/495018202021-11-21T22:15:00Z2021-11-21T22:15:00ZUsing Common Data File across both Mac & PC Platforms<div><p>I'm a fellow user.</p>
<p>Do not store your Moneydance data files on iCloud, Dropbox or any other sort of network service.</p>
<p>The way Moneydance handles data is suitable for its internal syncing but it is not compatible with the way these services handle data, it is possible that storing data on such services could result in data corruption.</p>
<p>Moneydance should always use local files, if you want to have the data available on multiple devices then you use one of these network services along with Moneydance own syncing engine to pass the data between devices. The way the syncing engine writes the data to network data services is compatible with they way they work.</p></div>dwgtag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/495018202021-11-21T22:46:31Z2021-11-21T22:46:31ZUsing Common Data File across both Mac & PC Platforms<div><p>Simply put. The MD dataset is not a file, it’s a folder/package that can contain 1000s of files. If you try to put this on a cloud folder you may be lucky or more likely doomed to corruption (as the cloud folder will decide what to keep locally or move off due to age).</p>
<p>So, always store your xxx.moneydance dataset on local disk.</p>
<p>You can setup sync. This pushes change txns to a sync folder which can be on a cloud server. Other MD programs can read these sync txns in to update their local copy.</p></div>Stuart Beesley (Mr Toolbox)tag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/495018202021-11-21T23:09:42Z2021-11-21T23:09:42ZUsing Common Data File across both Mac & PC Platforms<div><p>The above information is correct. To put it even more simply: a Moneydance data set is much more complex than any of those other data files that you mention. If you're sharing the main data set on a syncing service, it's extremely easy for any of the above things to happen, and especially for one system to overwrite recent changes made by another, leading to a mess that's not easy to clean up. Sharing the syncing folder that's created when you activate that function (File -> Syncing from the menu bar) is fine, because it was designed specifically to address issues like these. Before we had this, we had many users who were sharing their main data file on a syncing service as if it were like any other file, which far too often led to unresolvable errors when shared between multiple systems.</p>
<p>Ethan<br>
Infinite Kind Support</p></div>Ethantag:infinitekind.tenderapp.com,2009-01-14:Comment/495018202021-11-22T08:05:07Z2021-11-22T08:05:07ZUsing Common Data File across both Mac & PC Platforms<div><p>I am not support staff, just a user.<br>
Hi Steve</p>
<p>By now from the above posts, you should have got the message don’t move your data set from your hard drive to a cloud server.</p>
<p>You need to use Moneydance’s own sync engine by following these set of support articles at <a href="https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/syncing-and-sharing-data">https://infinitekind.tenderapp.com/kb/syncing-and-sharing-data</a></p>
<p>Hope this helps</p></div>derekkent23