Quote:
Originally Posted by luxesto
bluefire, i've just read this entire thread and your solution seems most applicable to my situation -- home mac, office mac and traveling laptop -- your implementation of the automator app would make this most elegant for me, but unfortunately, i don't know how do do so ... might you post instructions for some of us less initiated/gifted users? many thanks!
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Ok, Luxesto, sorry it took longer than I thought it would to get around to this.
Here's what I've got. Keep in mind this is the first time I've ever used Automator for anything so this is very simple! And if anyone has suggestions for improvement, do share.
First, you want your thumb drive plugged in so Automator can find the path when we want to reference it.
Laptop to Thumb Drive workflow:
- Open Automator and choose Custom workflow
- Under "Library", click on Files & Folders
- In the next pane, double-click on Get Specified Finder Items
- In the Get Specified Finder Items block, click Add...
- Navigate to the location of your Omnifocus database. The default is ~/Library/Application Support/OmniFocus/OmniFocus.ofocus
- Choose the database (OmniFocus.ofocus) and the Perspectives folder and click Add [*You could also choose the OmniFocus folder that contains those two items, but if you choose the folder then you will also always be transferring the lock status of the file]
- Go back to the Actions area, and double-click Copy Finder Items (in the same pane where you selected Get Specified Finder Items)
- Choose the location where you want your files copied. In our case, it should be to your thumb drive; you'll likely have to click "other" and then navigate to your thumb drive.
- Click "Replace Existing Files". This will overwrite whatever you already have there, which shouldn't be an issue in the situation described.
- Under "Options", I have "Show this action when the workflow runs" checked, but this is your choice. It means when I run the workflow, I get a box that says "continue" when it starts copying over the files. If the box remains unchecked, the workflow will run to the end without any prompt or notification.
- That's it! You can save the workflow and test it out and be sure it's doing what you want it to do. After you're sure, you can then open it again in Automator, then Save As and change the file format to Application. This way you can have the application in a handy location (desktop?) and when you click on the app, it runs rather than opening in Automator.
To create the application that takes the OF database from the thumb drive and puts it back on your computer, you would basically create a new workflow and add the same steps in the same order as above, but at the beginning reference the OF database & perspective folders on your thumb drive, and at the end have them copy to your laptop database location.
My only word of caution is to make sure the application names, once you save them as such, are noticeably different, or in different locations. This method is so simple that you don't have to think much about it, and if icons are right next to each other and the names are very similar (such as: "OF db to work" vs "OF db from work") you might inadvertently click the wrong one. Of course, I say this from experience, when one day in a rush I accidentally clicked on the wrong app because their names looked very similar. Because my workflow overwrites anything already in the destination, I overwrote a later version with an earlier one. Luckily, my OF database backups existed, but I had to wait till I got back to the computer with the most recent backup before all was right again. And of course I changed the application names so now I can't confuse them!
Hope that helped,
blue