Like some others I’ve seen on the forums I use gramps (5.1.6) on different computers, using Dropbox. For most things this works well enough for now. However media remains a problem, because the Dropbox location differs between my computers and the “relative path” setting apparently is saved along with the gramps project.
My question is similar to this one. A few differences:
I’m using 3 different computers all on windows 10 x64, with dropbox installed. Using fewer computers is not an option.
These computers are on different physical locations and on different networks, routers etc. - this also is something that I currently cannot change.
I have tried to create an environment variable (“%Dropbox%”) and while this works in Explorer, it does not when applied to the relative path field of Gramps.
I’ve created a G: drive letter pointing to my genealogy folder on Dropbox. So I can use it directly in Gramps.
See this link:
You could replicate that letter creation on every computer you use and specify where is your genealogy directory independently of each computer path to that directory
The environment variable in the Base media path should have worked. Did you enter it as {Dropbox}/grampsphotos (or whatever the common subdirectory name should be)?
Thanks for the hint, I probably used a different syntax.
However I just now tried what you suggested and it results in gramps throwing a rather large error message. Again I feel like I should point out that the environment variable works in Explorer.
I’ve tried:
%Dropbox%\folderpath → no error but no media found
{Dropbox}\folderpath → error
{Dropbox}/folderpath → error
Besides the mapping a drive letter suggestion works but is not ideal since it shows up in Explorer funny.
I’ve looked for documentation on what I can and cannot enter as gramps relative media path but haven’t found anything. Do you have any further clues for me? Thanks a lot in advance!
I just tried this again, and discovered that somewhere along the line the environment variable was changed to UPPERCASE before the Gramps code got to look at it. Unless the variable within the “{}” is an exact match for an existing environment variable you get an error. So you would need to use “{DROPBOX}/folderpath” to make it work. To be on the safe side I would also enter your environment variable in uppercase when you set it up.
