OneDrive causing Affinity Publisher to be unresponsive for about a minute

[Brent Pedersen]

I use Affinity Publisher on a Surface Book/Win10. When I save a graphic (screenshot) to the asset folder I use for my document, OneDrive backs up the file. This causes Affinity to be unresponsive for about a minute (can't select text, can't save my file, etc.)

This only affect Affinity Publisher (Outlook, Sticky Notes, etc all work fine).

This is really annoying! Is there a way to stop this? I want my graphics/documents backed up but I'd like it to do it in the background when my computer is idle so that it's transparent to me.

Is there a setting I can turn on/off to stop this?

[thomaso]

It seems that APub gets curious or jealous when someone else accesses the asset folder and waits a while to see what else might happen to change. There is no corresponding preference in APub, the "best" would be to backup to the OneDrive in a coffee break – just as we are expected not to use resources from a network volume like NAS or Cloud in APub, even local USB sticks as resource storage can confuse APub if the system needs to update their existence and availability.

3 hours ago, Brent Pedersen said:

I'd like it to do it in the background when my computer is idle so that it's transparent to me.

What do you mean? If your computer is idle, it is not transparent to you either, right? However, I suppose you have to set the backup conditions in the backup software, I doubt Affinity can influence the backup workflow.

[Brent Pedersen]

By "in the background...so that it's transparent to me" I meant that I don't want it to immediately back up the file if I'm actively working in the document. I want the back up to happen but not take first priority. I want it to wait for an idle time (pause when it senses me working in the document like other applications on my computer, like PowerPoint working with screenshots).

[Brent Pedersen]

One solution is to pause synching for 2 hours while I'm actively working in the document and then letting it back up later when I'm working on other projects.

[v_kyr]

20 minutes ago, Brent Pedersen said:

One solution is to pause synching for 2 hours while I'm actively working in the document and then letting it back up later when I'm working on other projects.

Well yes, the whole behavior has to be mostly customized via OneDrive settings here. Like for example via excluding specific APub file storage directories from an immediate OneDrive synchronisation, or changing the OneDrive synchronisation time (... schedule OneDrive syncing) etc.

 

[thomaso]

19 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

has to be mostly customized

"mostly" ? – At least in / from Affinity there is no way to influence the backup software settings and behaviour. Even increasing the Affinity performance preference "File Recovery Intervall" wouldn't prevent Affinity from delays during backups.

[thomaso]

1 hour ago, Brent Pedersen said:

I want it to wait for an idle time

Try a search for "onedrive backup time intervall", for instance:

https://businesstechplanet.com/how-to-set-onedrive-to-sync-at-a-certain-time/

Quote

Step by step process – how to set OneDrive to sync at a certain time?

• Locate the windows app called “Task Scheduler” using the search bar at the bottom left
• Click on it.
• Now in the “Action” tab at the top, click on “Create Task”.
• Name your task and set it in a way that describes its approach.
• Then click on “OK”.
• Now click on “Trigger”.
• Then select the time you wish to run the scheduling between.
• Then click on “OK”.
• Now return to “Create Task” and look for the OneDrive application script.
• Finally, once set, click on OK.

[v_kyr]

27 minutes ago, thomaso said:

"mostly" ?

Since it always depends on how OneDrive was initially setup and customized on the OP's system at all. Further when not always autostartet and instead on demand manually enabled/disabled those problems don't occur at all.

[thomaso]

So "mostly" means "always". This confused me before, – as if there was an optional or partial access to the backup settings in Affinity.

[v_kyr]

1 minute ago, thomaso said:

So "mostly" means "always".

Jip! - The whole is entirely OneDrive dependent here!

Here's another article about OneDrive scheduling for the OP ...

• 2 Easy Ways to Schedule OneDrive Sync Automatically

 

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, v_kyr said:

Jip! - The whole is entirely OneDrive dependent here!

So if I understand this correctly, the answer to the OP's question is to set OneDrive either not to automatically back up the assets.propcol file at all (& maybe do that manually?) or to set the sync time to some time when it is unlikely that Affinity will be running?

Personally, I would not rely on OneDrive for automatically backing up anything related to the Affinity apps, since that too often seems to cause problems with them.

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

So if I understand this correctly, the answer to the OP's question is to set OneDrive either not to automatically back up the assets.propcol file at all (& maybe do that manually?) or to set the sync time to some time when it is unlikely that Affinity will be running?

Jip!

[thomaso]

18 hours ago, Brent Pedersen said:

the asset folder I use for my document,

I understand the "asset folder" as the OP's term for a custom location of linked resources …

2 hours ago, R C-R said:

back up the assets.propcol file

… not as the contents of the asset panel which would alter the asset.propcol. Nevertheless, consider that the .propcol is stored in APub's user library system folder, together with a lot more files, mainly the .autosave and temp files, which require permanent connection with the app. Thus it wouldn't help here to exclude only the asset.propcol from the backup but possibly would need to exclude all files which could be involved with the running app and its used / opened files.

From this perspective the backup would become rather useless if all those files would become excluded from the backup – compared to the alternative option to redefine the backup time or interval.

[R C-R]

@thomaso, I assumed the OP meant the assets available in the Assets panel, but you might be right about it being linked resources in a particular document instead. If the latter, then I suspect the only way to avoid the stall (& possibly other issues because Affinity does not work well with remotely stored files like on a cloud server) is to set OneDrive to sync only at some time when Affinity is not running and to only use resources stored on a local drive.

IOW, use OneDrive only for a backup of locally stored files for any files that will be used as linked resources in Affinity.

[thomaso]

@R C-R, yes. You seem to confirm what I hoped to express in the 1st reply in this thread. 😉