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Synced file forgets changes on Mac app close

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Paul

01 Jun, 2022 12:23 AM

We just set up dropbox syncing. Now, however, the data file forgets all of our changes every time we close the Moneydance on the Mac. It's effectively frozen where it was before we turned on syncing.

The data appears just fine on an iPhone and iPad, and sync sort of works ... but keeps reverting. It's like this:

Make a change on the iPhone. Open Moneydance on the Mac. The change syncs and we see it on the Mac. Close the Mac app. Reopen the Mac app. The change is now gone (This is the problem!). It writes updated sync data. Then the change disappears on the iPhone also.

Same thing happens if we make a change on the Mac app. Wait a couple minutes (without closing the Mac app), and the change syncs and appears on the iPhone. But close and reopen the Mac app, and it's gone again.

1. 1 Posted by Stuart Beesley ... on 01 Jun, 2022 05:19 AM

   

   This smacks of a bad .txn file that keeps reapplying (the past). Can you post help/show console log here? One fix is to install the latest version. What version are you running?

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2. Support Staff 2 Posted by Maddy on 01 Jun, 2022 09:08 AM

   

   Hi Paul,

   We are sorry to hear about the problem you have encountered.

   • Which version and build of Moneydance are you using? To check, open Moneydance and select Moneydance --> About Moneydance

   • Can you let me know which operating system you're running on your computer/s?

   • Did you have to restore from a backup for some reason? This would interrupt the sync relationship.

   • Is your data file stored in the default location?

   Please note: if you are syncing your data with a mobile device, or another system - you should NOT move your data file to a shared folder location, like Dropbox. The file should remain on your local system if your data is being synced or shared, as outlined here.

   • When you navigate to File->Syncing which sync method do you have selected? Dropbox Folder or Dropbox Connection?

   • Finally, is your most recent data showing on your phone or on your computer?

   Thank you

   --
   Maddy, Infinite Kind Support

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3. 3 Posted by Paul on 01 Jun, 2022 11:26 PM

   

   Thank you both for the questions and suggestions. Relocating the file to the default location seems to have fixed the issue—all of the attempted changes that had been reverted came flooding back all at once, and subsequent changes now persist on app restarts.

   Follow-up question: What is best practice for two users needing to share a file on the same computer, from two different user accounts? We had the file stored in a local Shared folder since we have two different user accounts on the same computer that need to access it—and turned on Dropbox so we could also access data from our mobile devices. This had been working fine and didn't seem to violate Moneydance recommendations (since it was all local, and physically only one person could be changing it at a time), but somehow adding Dropbox syncing introduced permissions errors? Looking at the console log, I saw a number of access denied errors related to txn files, that went away after relocating the file to the default location, like:

   error retrieving txn files: java.io.FileNotFoundException
   [path to .mdtxn file] (Permission denied)

   and

    ...uploaded file to dropbox path [...].mdtxn with length 4112
   nio atomic move failed. Reverting to old-fashioned copy-and-move. Errors were: e1:java.nio.file.AccessDeniedException:

   Thanks again,
   Paul

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4. 4 Posted by dwg on 02 Jun, 2022 03:36 AM

   

   I'm a fellow user.

   You were using a shared folder, that with Moneydance is generally a no no.

   When using syncing it is best to not be overly creative and to set it up in the environment that it is envisaged for.

   The approach I would take is to set it up as if each of the users is the only user of that machine, hence each has a copy of the data set within their own folder structure, the sync location for each user is Dropbox, just like if they each has their own computer.

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5. 5 Posted by Paul on 02 Jun, 2022 08:38 PM

   

   Gotcha, that makes sense, thanks. I think we had gotten confused since the documentation regularly contrasts "shared" with "local", so we thought the shared no-no was just for shared network folders. We'll try setting it up as you say, and hopefully that will work out.

   Thanks everyone for the support!

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6. System closed this discussion on 01 Sep, 2022 08:40 PM.