Roundtrip Saving to DropBox Not Working

[thomasbricker]

I want to be able to save my Affinity Photo documents to my Dropbox storage and work on them in my desktop environment.

It just isn't working.

I've read several threads already, tried to follow the instructions. Just doesn't work.

I have tried Open from iCloud (I then drive to my Dropbox folder. And yes, I have Dropbox enabled as a location within the Files app on my iPad.). That works.

I modify the image on my iPad. I close it and go back to my Index page. I click on the hamburger and select save. It goes through the process, never giving me the option as to WHERE it is saving. Only says Saving. Then I poke around on both my Dropbox folders and my iCloud folders. I dont see this modified file ANYWHERE within the desktop environment.
WHERE is it!

This inability to make this work defeats the whole promise of seamless back and forth editing between devices.

Obviously I am missing some critical step, but honestly, it's about as clear as mud as to how to make it actually function.

Can somebody there at Affinity please get me up to speed here? This is a total buzz kit...

 

Thanks.

 

[DM1]

22 hours ago, thomasbricker said:

I click on the hamburger and select save.

It just Isn't working..... I agree. Dropbox and  iCloud needs work. It’s really quite confusing.

I just tried this on an iCloud file. Open from cloud method. Modded it and used hamburger save. Files shows iCloud version unchanged. I was able to find the modded version.  It had been saved to the default affinity folder (on my iPad).

Then I reopened ICloud file, modded it and used Save from the worksheet Document menu. Checking the iCloud file with Files shows the changes had been saved this time.  
My conclusion is that Hamburger menu saves to default setting.  
Then I tried using worksheet Document menu Save, with a Dropbox file and the file was NOT updated.  Buggy?

Edit. I tried later using Dropbox with Hamburger Save and Dropbox version updated.
 

So saving with document open saves changes in iCloud. Saving iCloud document using hamburger menu creates a new file in my default on iPad location but doesn’t update iCloud.

On Dropbox file the opposite happens. 
 

 

 

[thomasbricker]

OK, I need to reply to my own post. As is usually the case with this application, it’s not a matter of it not working, it’s a matter of me not knowing how to work it. The round-trip save to dropbox does in fact work perfectly well. It’s just very finicky about how you instigate the file. If you don’t start out pulling it from dropbox in the first place it’s very hard to understand where it goes. But if the file does begin within Dropbox, it stays there. So it does work, you just can’t see how it’s making that decision. When the file is saved on an iPad, it does not give you a dialog box as to where to put it. It just put it back where it started from. You can’t really move it after the fact. Unless you go into your desktop environment and move the file within the finder there. Then you can open from cloud on the iPad And start working on it. It will then remain in dropbox if you have put it into dropbox in the desktop environment. It’s kind of weird, but when you get used to it it makes sense.

[samstrong]

I have a similar issue. Round trip working between Windows and iPad via Dropbox is a lot of work.

Here's what I seem to need to do.

1. Create file in Dropbox.
2. 'Open from Cloud' on iPad.
3. Make edits.
4. Save file.
5. Close file (need to do this or you'll never get updates from Dropbox).
6. Edit on desktop.
7. Save on desktop.
8. 'Open from Cloud' on iPad again.
9. etc.

The problem is I have to 'Open from Cloud' every single time I want to receive updates from Dropbox. When opening a file that originally came from Dropbox, Designer makes no attempt to retrieve the updated version. If you don't realise this or forget to do the dance, you end up with a conflicted copy.

It's also pretty confusing that you have to explicitly close a file from the Designer home screen when just navigating back to that home screen "closes" the file (in my brain).

[DM1]

13 hours ago, samstrong said:

It's also pretty confusing that you have to explicitly close a file from the Designer home screen when just navigating back to that home screen "closes" the file (in my brain).

Think of it as changing tabs as in Safari. The AD home screen is where the 'tabs' sit. Tabs remain open until 'Closed', just like Safari. Tapping an icon in the Home screen is akin to opening the 'tab,.

 

[samstrong]

2 hours ago, DM1 said:

Think of it as changing tabs as in Safari. The AD home screen is where the 'tabs' sit. Tabs remain open until 'Closed', just like Safari. Tapping an icon in the Home screen is akin to opening the 'tab,.

 

That's a good analogy except if a website changes and I reopen the page, I get a new version of the website (caching aside). Anyway, I guess this is how it is for now. It's just more work than it should be, really not obvious to new users and the official article on how to work across multiple platforms doesn't quite cover the entire process or the idiosyncrasies.

Edited June 16, 2020 by samstrong

[ptodd]

On the Windows side (probably mac too), if changes are made to an open document, common good UX practice would probably be something like a modal "this file has been modified externally, keep local version or open new version?" dialog, it seems you need to explicitly close the document and open it again.  I can't see a 'file/revert' either.

Very happy with the software generally, but just now trying to move between desktop & iPad to mock up design and add annotations with Apple pencil and it's fairly cumborsome.  If it was a shared document with other people working on it at the same time, of course that's always going to be very difficult to avoid problems and it'd take a heroic effort to get perfect UX for that... but I'd definitely like to see this situation improved.