A friend has to use Dropbox in order to collaborate with two other users to author a book. However, when opening Documents items that have been placed in Dropbox by the other two come up in duplicate or even in triplicate. It is is possible to delete the duplicates of these items but not to delete any unwanted poriginals as they then disappear from the computers of the other two. Is there a way to remove what has become a lot of unwanted stuff without it going from the other two computers?
My guess would be that they are not duplicates. Any addition to the end of the document should be obvious but alterations in the middle may be harder to spot. If the software they are using for their authoring can track changes, it should be possible to see those.
I'm guessing that we have a version dated say 28/12/12. All three authors download this version (perhaps) to work on at leisure. Author A makes an addition and uploads it. Authors B and C do the same to the version they already had (i.e. not Author A's revision) and upload it. You now have three versions of the document that was originally the 28/12/12 one and if the versions are difficult to tell apart, they may erroneously be assumed to be duplicates.
If it's not that you'll need a reply from a Dropbox user.
Looking at Dropbox Help Centre (near the foot of the Dropbox desktop menu) suggests that in the situation described by Mick, some of the copies which had been independently edited will be marked as 'conflicted copies', to draw attention to the situation, and ensure that copies are not deleted unwittingly. If the copies are not so marked in the case described, it seems possible (at least to me) that these may be different versions that have not been independently edited.
This should be clear if they are compared automatically, if the software permits, as suggested.
If this does not solve the problem. I suggest that using 'help' as described above may be useful.
Use google docs to collaborate, it's real time and you don't get into these issues of versions..... Glad to demo this tomorrow in Dorchester if needed.
Google Docs is OK if you're happy to work online and with the software they provide. If you happen to be using say Pages for designing a flyer or if the authors in the original post here were working on a screen play using Final Draft then Dropbox is the way to go.
Yes you are right Mick, its sort of bare-ish bones document handling, but at least you can all work on it until the content is right, and then hand it to the best person to beautify it, it works for some cases but I agree if the only tools you know are pages, then shuffling a version back and forwards can get similar results. it depends a lot on the team capabilities and the desired objectives. I would love to do this again, but with mor prep than a few short hours.!!!!
Despite the hiccups I suspect several of us learnt a lot - but there is clearly more to learn! How about the April 9th meeting in Dorchester if I promise to learn my password!?
Michael Corgan 