How To Sync OmniOutliner between 2 (or more) computers using dotmac / .mac
 

I thought I would post my solution to synching my OmniOutliner documents between my main iMac and my iBook.

I've loved the idea of Outliner since getting my iBook a couple of years ago but not being able to sync data between machines kept me trying other services like Remember The Milk and TaDa. Still they didn't do it for me and I kept coming back to Outliner hoping to find a hidden way I had previously missed.

Well of course it was right in front of me the whole time. The solution involved using my iDisk - part of my ever increasingly useful .mac subscription.

Instead of saving to my local drive on the iBook or iMac - I now save to the iDisk and can easily access the files from either computer. In fact this little trick is being used more and more by me as I discover how damn handy the iDisk can be.

But wait - there's more !!

In my .mac > iDisk settings I have iDisk Syncing On. So my iDisk is now actually mirrored on my local hard drives - just makes accessing and saving files a lot faster.

When I save a file to the local iDisk, it then Auto syncs with the one online, which then Auto syncs with the "other" local iDisk next time I access that machine.

I've been running this solution for a couple of weeks now and it's worked brilliantly. So I thought it was time to share.

I hope that's not a too long winded explanation of how it works.

Shine On.

Thanks for sharing this - it's helpful - I'm surprised and disappointed that OO does not offer a hosted website for outlines as an service business. Indeed, that's been holding me back from buying licenses.

It's not so surprising, really. Omni's strengths are in developing applications, not as a service provider. Realistically, how much extra revenue are they going to get from customers who won't buy the product unless they can get a file sharing setup from the same vendor? There aren't any real synchronization/multi-user editing features in OmniOutliner that might require a server provided by the developer, so what is it that you expect to get from them that you couldn't get from a 3rd party that provided secure file sharing, probably at a lower cost and with greater redundancy?