Pages versions and Dropbox

[boston04and07]

I have a question about Pages versions and Dropbox. I'm a student and currently have a MacBook Air, which I usually use in the library at school. I'm thinking about getting a Mac mini in the near future. Right now I use symlinks to keep my local Documents folder synced with Dropbox. If I did the same with my mini, and then I typed a Pages document at school, would the incremental autosaved versions get pushed back to my mini at home? (I was really hoping they would for backup purposes). Or does Dropbox only save the current version of a file and not the previous versions? I *think* what I'm asking is whether the new versions feature in Pages is built into the file or not..any help is appreciated!

 

[saberahul]

I have a question about Pages versions and Dropbox. I'm a student and currently have a MacBook Air, which I usually use in the library at school. I'm thinking about getting a Mac mini in the near future. Right now I use symlinks to keep my local Documents folder synced with Dropbox. If I did the same with my mini, and then I typed a Pages document at school, would the incremental autosaved versions get pushed back to my mini at home? (I was really hoping they would for backup purposes). Or does Dropbox only save the current version of a file and not the previous versions? I *think* what I'm asking is whether the new versions feature in Pages is built into the file or not..any help is appreciated!

DropBox updates the existent file so that there is only one copy. Your Versions on the Air would not become the Versions on the Mac Mini. iCloud might be able to help but till date I have been unable to figure out what the 'Documents and Data' feature of iCloud really does (on a Mac).

 

[djharris]

I, too, was curious how dropbox versioning works with the Mac OS X Lion versioning feature. Here's a few things I've tried, with the dropbox binary as of today (1.2.49 for OS X)

I went into the TextEdit program (This is OS X Lion Versioning enabled app. Pages would be OS X Lion Versions enabled, however, Microsoft Word would not, as that would require significant changes to the program and MS has not been able to accomplish it thus far)

I created a TextEdit file in dropbox, and saved a few versions of it. When using the dropbox web interface, it appeared perfectly in sync with their versioning system.

I duplicated the file (Under OS X Lion versioning, this creates an independent copy, or "branch" of the document to work on) This did the exact same thing on dropbox and created a separate file with no versions.

I've been using computers since I was a kid, (I'm 26 years old now) and I've never had any sort of version-control on my local computer's filesystem itself (Windows, Mac Leopard and Snow Leopard, various Linuces and other Unices) so native versioning in the OS X Lion filesystem itself will be a significant paradigm shift for me to get straight in my head.

So, the long and short of it for the OP's scenario with the Air and the Mini, using Pages (OS X Lion Native) versioning with dropbox on both computers should work well and as expected. Good luck in your studies!

Oh, be sure to check out http://www.dropbox.com/edu to use a .edu e-mail address to get double the referral space bonus for yourself and others you've referred for being a student.

 

[steve knight]

dropbox has 30 days of versioning. I pay extra to have unlimited versioning it has saved my butt more than once.

 

[djharris]

Thought I'd add another note here about using Non-OS X Lion enabled apps such as Microsoft Word. I use Word as an example, however, it can be true for a variety of other programs that have not been updated yet to integrate OS X Lion Native "versions"

If you chose to use Word modifying files on the dropbox folder itself, every time you clicked the "save" button it will save a version of the file using the dropbox versioning system. So, you don't really "need" Lion's native versioning on your apps, but you can use it in conjunction with dropbox if you are using an app that has it.

DH

 

[maflynn]

TIf you chose to use Word modifying files on the dropbox folder itself, every time you clicked the "save" button it will save a version of the file using the dropbox versioning system. So, you don't really "need" Lion's native versioning on your apps, but you can use it in conjunction with dropbox if you are using an app that has it.

DH

That's what I do, but I also want cross platform compatibility and dropbox gives you that, Pages/iCloud does not