This is killing me... I love OF but I have tons of attachments in my Actions - files of info needed to do the action, and I keep my life and my whole research group's activities in OF. I need to be able to see the attachments' contents on whichever device I am opening OF. At first I was simply embedding the whole file in the Actions, but I found that sometimes it would embed a link when it was supposed to embed the actual file (a bug), and there was no built-in way to periodically scan the database for such unintended link attachments. I would find out the hard way, when on the road and needing the attachment, and it wouldn't open (being a broken link to a file that's not on the client machine).
Worse, when it worked correctly and embedded the actual file, the database got too big and corruption would set in during syncs. I talked with the very helpful Ninjas and they told me that OF isn't designed for a lot of embedded files, and links were the way to go. They recommended that I link to Dropbox files, so that I can have my OF database and its links from any client machine. I thought this made sense and transferred all my attachments to links to Dropbox files (mostly PDFs).
Then I encountered a problem. On the same computer where I created the link, when I double-click the attachment, it would sometimes (but not always!) tell me that it can't find the target file but oddly, take me to the right Dropbox folder and even highlight the right file for me in the selection menu. (None of the files had been moved). What's worse, on other machines, the link doesn't work at all, even though the Dropbox folder there is exactly the same as on the other machine, and the files are in the same place.
I asked tech support, and they told me that this is not a high priority feature because not many people ask about this. Is it really possible that people who use OF don't care about having stable attachments in their databases?
The latest suggestion from tech support was:
"My suggestion is to use the links, and in cases where the links fail, to open dropbox on the device and locate/open the file by hand. I understand that's less convenient, but the files should be present on all your devices even if the links don't work."
so, if I understand this correctly, it sounds like there is no reliable and recommended way to attach/link files to Actions that would be available on whichever client was opening the Database. I'm posting here in the hopes that someone has a workaround: has anyone figured out how to do this? Maybe Dropbox isn't the way to go and another cloud service is more compatible. I'm desperate; is there any way to attach files to Actions and have them available from all your OF clients?
thanks in advance,
Mike
Worse, when it worked correctly and embedded the actual file, the database got too big and corruption would set in during syncs. I talked with the very helpful Ninjas and they told me that OF isn't designed for a lot of embedded files, and links were the way to go. They recommended that I link to Dropbox files, so that I can have my OF database and its links from any client machine. I thought this made sense and transferred all my attachments to links to Dropbox files (mostly PDFs).
Then I encountered a problem. On the same computer where I created the link, when I double-click the attachment, it would sometimes (but not always!) tell me that it can't find the target file but oddly, take me to the right Dropbox folder and even highlight the right file for me in the selection menu. (None of the files had been moved). What's worse, on other machines, the link doesn't work at all, even though the Dropbox folder there is exactly the same as on the other machine, and the files are in the same place.
I asked tech support, and they told me that this is not a high priority feature because not many people ask about this. Is it really possible that people who use OF don't care about having stable attachments in their databases?
The latest suggestion from tech support was:
"My suggestion is to use the links, and in cases where the links fail, to open dropbox on the device and locate/open the file by hand. I understand that's less convenient, but the files should be present on all your devices even if the links don't work."
so, if I understand this correctly, it sounds like there is no reliable and recommended way to attach/link files to Actions that would be available on whichever client was opening the Database. I'm posting here in the hopes that someone has a workaround: has anyone figured out how to do this? Maybe Dropbox isn't the way to go and another cloud service is more compatible. I'm desperate; is there any way to attach files to Actions and have them available from all your OF clients?
thanks in advance,
Mike
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