Newbie needs help with synch for MacAir and iPhone

[Kate Broughton]

Greetings … I am so hopeful that Tap Forms will allow me to walk away from FileMaker Pro and its excessive price. My needs are simple, but they include being able to synchronize my data on my laptop (Macbook Air) and my iPhone. I’m a specialty foods producers who works from two locations. All of our production data is stored on the desktop, and I need a way to access this info with my phone when I’m at the production facility.

I just purchased the apps for both device today and created a test form, but no matter what I do it won’t show up on the iPhone. I downloaded the desktop version from the App store, but when it showed up on my desktop there was a little X next to the icon. Did I notice somewhere on the TF site that iCloud won’t work with a downloaded version? I’m baffled.

If I can’t get this to work through iCloud, I’m not having any luck with DropBox either. Thanks for any help you can give.

[Brendan]

Hi Kate,

That’s right, you’ll need to use Dropbox with the direct download version. So make sure you have Dropbox configured on your iPhone and MacBook Air.

Also, see the online documentation for more information on setting up sync between your devices. There’s also a demonstration video:

http://www.manula.com/manuals/tap-zapp/tap-forms-mac/3/en/topic/icloud-sync

Thanks,

Brendan

[Kate Broughton]

Thanks, Brendan. I followed your instructions and I’m doing a happy dance. After several reboots I finally can see my new database on the iPhone. Woohoo! Thanks so much! I can’t wait to dive in and migrate my data from FileMaker Pro!

One question, though. When I look at my online Dropbox folders, I can see several documents stored in Apps > Tap Forms Sync > SyncDocuments – Dropbox. Do these files continue to increase in number every time there is a sync, or do they get over-ridden? How many of these files should there be in this folder? I don’t want a lot of clutter if some of these files are obsolete. (E.g., when I do backups of my accounting program, a new file is created and the old backups pile up. Every now and then I delete all but the 4-5 most current ones.)

Now that I have things humming, I don’t want to mess up the works. But it would be helpful to understand how to treat these Dropbox files. Thanks again!

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