Keep-It-Simple Accounting Software

OneDrive

How to Share Your Data Using OneDrive

OneDrive is a free service that lets you backup and share your data between multiple computers.  You can use it to store your Cashbook data file, and access the data from a different computer in another location (but if it’s in the same building, then use networking).

If you’re using Windows 10, the required OneDrive app will probably already be installed.  If you don’t have it, or you use a different Windows operating system, you can download it here from Microsoft.  You’ll need to make sure you have OneDrive installed on each computer you’re using.

Setting up Your Computers

On your main computer (which currently has the Cashbook):-

  1. Make a copy of the entire “Cashbook Data” folder (by default, this will be found in your “Documents” or “My Documents” folder)
  2. Open the “OneDrive” folder on your Computer (if you don’t know where this is, click on the “OneDrive” icon in your system tray, by the clock, and choose “Open Folder”)
  3. Paste the “Cashbook Data” folder into the “OneDrive” folder
  4. You will momentarily notice a small “synchronizing” icon appear over the “Cashbook Data” folder.  This will soon change to a “tick” icon, indicating that your “Cashbook Data” folder (and the files within it) have been successfully synchronized (or backed up to the cloud)

If you now go to another of your computers which also has OneDrive installed and is signed into the same account, you should then be able to open the “OneDrive” folder and see your “Cashbook Data” there.

Now for each other computer, you need to set the “Data File Folder” as follows:-

  1. Open the “Cashbook Data” folder from within your “OneDrive” folder
  2. Inside the “Cashbook Data” folder, double-click your Cashbook data file (*.CB file)
  3. You’ll see a warning message about the Cashbook not being in the “Data File Folder”. Click “OK”, and then go to the Setup Wizard and on the “General Setup” screen, change the “Data File Folder” to match the path to your new OneDrive folder
  4. When you exit the software, OneDrive will take an hour or so to synchronize the data to the cloud (making the updated data accessible from your other computers).

Notes:-

  • If OneDrive doesn’t appear to be synchronizing properly on one of your computers, right-click on the “OneDrive” icon (in the system tray, down by the clock) and choose “Pause Syncing”, and select any time frame.  Then, right-click it again and choose “Resume Syncing”.
  • In our tests with OneDrive, we found that there can be quite a long delay before the synchronization is done – unlike Dropbox which was a lot faster.
  • If you access the Cashbook from more than one location at the same time, then you’ll get a conflicted copy of the file (evident by a hyphen and username at the end of the file name), and you’ll need to choose which one you want to keep going with (see “Help with Conflicted Copies” below).
  • For OneDrive’s app to sync properly, the safest approach is to make sure that your computers are turned on and connected to the internet all the time, so that the files are always up to date.

Help with Conflicted Copies

If you’re having trouble with a conflicted copy of your Cashbook data file, please click here.