Synchronizing e-Sword Across Multiple Computers Using Dropbox – Revisited
Some time ago, I wrote about synchronizing e-Sword resources across multiple computers using Dropbox based on a change implemented with version 9 of e-Sword. Based on a comment that was made on that post today, I’ve updated the information and wanted to refresh the post.
e-Sword now lets you open most resources in a file location other than the e-Sword program file, typically C:\Program Files (x86)\e-Sword. This allows you to synchronize those e-Sword resources across multiple computers using Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, SkyDrive, or another similar service. This is really slick.
I had been using this feature to synchronize downloaded resources, like commentaries, Bibles, and topic files. But it works just as well for your personal study information, like verse markups, study notes, journal notes, and topic notes. Setup is just a bit different for those resources.
To set e-Sword up to look for Bibles, commentaries, and the like from a Dropbox file directory, first create the directory in your Dropbox folder. Move the Bible (*.bblx), commentary (*.cmtx), dictionary (*.dctx), devotion (*.devx), and topic (*.topx) files to that directory and let Dropbox synchronize them.
Open e-Sword, click Options – Resource, click the little file folder icon in the lower right corner and select the e-Sword folder you created above. Restart e-Sword and you ought to be set.
I had written about this much in my original post. What I didn’t adequately cover in that article is how to reset e-Sword to write your personal study information to that folder. I strongly suggest backing up your files before you do this, but a strong backup strategy ought to be part of your computing experience already!
To do this, you’ll first need to create new journal notes, markup, study notes, and topic notes files in your Dropbox folder. Do this from the computer where you have your personal information saved. This will create blank files in those locations. You can then exit e-Sword and copy files from your My Documents/e-Sword folder to your Dropbox folder, overwriting the blank files you just created. When you next open e-Sword, your notes ought to be there.
On your other computers, you need to tell e-Sword to open the new file. For markup, this is under Bible – Markup File – Open. For journal, study, and topic notes, you need to press CTRL and right click in the respective window and select Open.
I don’t know whether this can synchronize with the new e-Sword iPad app. It would be useful if that app used the same files as the PC version, but I just don’t know if that’s the case. If someone wants to buy me an iPad, I’d be more than willing to figure it out and write about it! :-)
I hope this helps you. It is certainly a useful feature for me.
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[...] 09-Jan-2013 Update: In response to a comment, I’ve explained how to configure e-Sword to look for personal study information in your Dropbox folder. See the comment below or a new post I just wrote describing how to do this, here: http://www.countrykeepers.com/wp/?p=3322 [...]