Comments on: Use TextExpander with DropBox

By: Scott Leverenz

Scott Leverenz — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:25:53 +0000

Can’t wait for this feature! Thank you.

By: Jean

Jean — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 22:34:50 +0000

Built-in Dropbox support is planned for TextExpander 3, due out in March. For more details, check out this interview with Greg on MacVoicesTV.

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 09:28:07 +0000

Any plans for official Dropbox syncing support? Love to be able to just tell it to move the folder where my snippets are to Dropbox.

By: Patrick Mast

Patrick Mast — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:00:58 +0000

Works great! Thanks!

By: Justin Williams

Justin Williams — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:21:55 +0000

@Alex: I’m not sure how the symlink would break, but if you can contact us at support@smileonmymac.com, I’d love to help figure out where things went wrong.

By: Alex

Alex — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:41:22 +0000

WARNING: This symlink solution worked great until for some reason the symlink broke. Once it broke TE couldn’t access it’s prefs files and brought the UI to a crawl and ultimately becoming unresponsive. Of course those two simple sentences don’t represent the hair pulling I went through getting back up to operational and tracking down the issue. BUYER BEWARE with this solution!

By: Van

Van — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 17:48:25 +0000

Why can’t they just include a feature like Typinator to sync with Dropbox. Comeon people, get it over with it. Move to Typinator if they dont implement this feature anytime soon.

By: Victor Agreda Jr

Victor Agreda Jr — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 17:22:07 +0000

None of this worked for me. The instructions aren’t clear about shutting down SystemPrefs, vs. somehow closing out TE. So, when I moved the folder initially, TE freaked out and crashed. Creating the symlink worked, but then destroyed all of my snippets and reverted back to… well, nothing.

I tried bringing things back via Time Machine, but that made everything much worse. Now TE won’t launch at all, even after a re-install.

By: Abizer

Abizer — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 11:08:38 +0000

It’s important that you create a symlink to the TextExpander folder and not just the files it contains.

When TE creates the Settings Backup.textexpander file it seems to do this by making a copy of the original file and renaming it. because the original is a symlink, the renamed file still points to the original file and you end up with both files referencing the same file on Dropbox.

This isn’t an issue when you symlink the folder.

By: Alex DeLuca

Alex DeLuca — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:57:55 +0000

These instructions in the index post worked for my primary machine, but the instructions for “subsequent macs” did not.

A free program available on the apple.com website, SymbolicLinker 2.0 was the solution for my secondary machines. SymbolicLinker can be found by searching for “SymbolicLinker 2.0″ on apple.com

Step by step:

1. Install Dropbox on both primary and subsequent machines.

2. Install SymbolicLinker 2.0 (after reading the brief installation and usage instructions – there are instructions for both Snow Leopard and Leopard/Tiger… and they are different) on both machines, or only on the subsequent machines. I followed the Snow Leopard install directions.

3. Install TextExpander on primary machine.

4. On your primary machine, follow instructions under “On your primary machine” in the index post above (open Terminal etc).

5. Install Textexpander on “subsequent” machine.

6. On the subsequent machine, in: System Preferences –> TextExpander preference pane –> Preferences disable TextExpander (uncheck the enable box). Then quit System Preferences.

7. Open the Dropbox folder on subsequent machine in Finder. Navigate to /Library and highlight the TextExpander folder. Right click and choose “Make symbolic link” from the drop-down menu. A folder with a name ending in symblink (or something like that) will be created – the icon will have a curved arrow in the left lower corner indicating ‘alias’ or ’symbolic link.’

8. Open a new Finder window and navigate to /Users/username/Library/Application Support/ – delete the “TextExpander” folder you find there. Drag the symbolic-linked folder you created in the Dropbox folder in the first Finder window to the Application-Support folder in the second. THEN RENAME that folder “TextExpander” (without the quotes).

9. Log out and log back in. (Not sure if this is necessary, but it couldn’t hurt). Make sure TextExpander is enabled in System Preferences –> TextExpander –> Preferences.

DONE. All should be well – TextExpander synch’ed via Dropbox on multiple macs.

Hope this helps someone who, like me, could not get subsequent macs sync’ed up using the index post instructions or the other helpful Comments.

..alex…