Dropbox is a wonderful little program. What it does is put a folder on your computer, and anything you place inside of that folder will be backed up to the internet. I shouldn’t need to convince you that keeping an off-computer backup of all your project files is a good idea.
Unfortunately, you have to manually put anything you want backed up in your Dropbox folder, and that’s lame, especially if you have multiple folders that you want to be constantly backed up. The good news? It’s 2009, robots are about to control the world, and we can automate it!
This tutorial will show you how to use Dropbox and Automator to do automatic backups of multiple folders.
Get Dropbox
Obviously, if you haven’t already, you’re going to need to get Dropbox and install it.
Create Action
Now you’ll have to create an Automator action so your syncing will be automated.
- Load up Automator (It should be in your Applications folder)and create a Custom Workflow
- In the Files & Folders tab, find “Get Specified Finder Items” and drag it to your workflow. Choose the first folder you’d like sync’d.
- Now drag “Copy Finder Items” to your workflow.
- Choose your Dropbox folder as the destination, and click “Replacing existing files” if you so desire.
- Keep doing this for all of the folders you want to keep sync’d with Dropbox.
- Save your Workflow.
- Right click on the action you’ve saved, and go to “Open With”. Navigate to System/Library/Core Services and choose to “Always Open With” Automator Runner. This makes it so when your action is opened it automatically runs.
Sync
Now, already we’ve made syncing multiple folders with Dropbox easier, as you can just run the action you’ve saved whenever you want to backup your things, and it will copy everything from your selected Folders to the Dropbox folder.
But wouldn’t it be nice if your computer would do this automatically at a specified time every day? I think so. We can do th
at with iCal Alarms.
- Load up iCal
- Go to File > New Event, and call it what you’d like.
- Double click on your Event and go to Edit
- Choose the time you’d like it done
- Repeat: Every day
- For Alarm, choose “Open File” and then find your Dropbox action
That’s it!
I hope you enjoyed the tutorial.
Note: There’s also a free version of Dropbox available but it’s limited to 2GB.
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{ 17 comments… read them below or add one }
Excellent article. You may also want to append it or create an alternate version for those who would like to use their own FTP space instead of paying for DropBox: you can do the exact same backup via FTP by using this little Automator extension:
http://editkid.com/upload_to_ftp/
Excellent tip, David.
Dropbox is truly a great service. I just hope it will stay so for a long time so we always will have a safe backup.
What a great idea!
*Just* what I was looking for. Love it! Thanks so much!
Thank you for this tip. I followed the directions exactly, in fact when I click on the workflow, it backs up. But it won't work in iCal. I get an error message saying the alarm failed. Am I missing something?
Great tip, thanks,
does this technique copy the whole file each time or just the modified items?
thanks.
This has just taken the already incredibly useful DropBox and pushed it all the way to 11. Very useful information!
Thanks man! I was looking for a solution like this, just perfect!
Is there a way to copy only changed files?
Thanks for the very easy-to-follow walk-thru! This marked my first attempt at using Automator, and it’s copying files to Dropbox without any hiccups.
Here’s a question, though…
Yesterday, I tried to get cute and change the “copy find items” command to the “move finder items” command instead. I really don’t want to create a backup as much as I just want to have the files reside inside Dropbox alone.
Overnight, the automated process did not run. When I tested it this morning within Automator, itself, I got an error message about not having permission to move files to Dropbox.
Any ideas what’s wrong here? It’s a work computer (Mac Mini) where I’m the administrator of my machine. Again, the “copy” feature worked fine the other day, but “moving” files hit a snag.
Thanks!
This is great…though how to you tell it to filter for newest files only? The filter option only allows to filter by name and size, I think.
So far on Automator 2.1 (OSX 10.6) I can see all the other options…but on 2.0.4 (OSX 10.5) the other options aren’t available…
wouldn’t it be super sweet if as soon as you save a file to docs it automatically saves it to the dropbox folder?! Rather than having to wait for it to sync at the “special” time of day you setup, or to have to do it manually… it is automator! There must be a “detect change in folder” action somewhere!
Radmacdaddy:
Just use folder actions instead of a normal Automator workflow. You’d create the same workflow, but it would be triggered when items are added to the specified directory. It’s simple to do this for a single directory–it gets complicated if you want to back up the contents of a directory that includes subdirectories because the automator workflow will only detect files added to the directory to which the action is attached. To include subdirectories, you’d have to attach the action to every subdirectory somehow.
I was looking for this! I didn’t know automator was capable of this, but then again, I never use it.
Thanks for putting the time in to write it up. I’m saving tons of time now!
Merci beaucoup, votre article m’a beaucoup servi.
I think I followed your tutorial correctly but am wondering about the “Alarm” step.
In your tutorial, you wrote, “Open File” then choose your DropBox action. Your graphic showed “sync with dropbox”. Was this a “choice” shown in the menu? My menu showed “iCal” or “Other”. I chose “Other” and then “Drop Box Automated Workflow”.
Is this correct? If so, does this mean my files will be backed up once everyday and not say, every hour, as an external hard drive back up would? Does Drop Box replace an Ext. HD back up or would you recommend having both?
Also, Does Drop Box notify you if you’ve exceeded the free 2GB?
Thanks!
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