Using Dropbox

Getting Started

• Using Dropbox
• Setup your WebDAV account
• Syncing with MobileOrg
• Browsing your Org files
• Encryption

Further Reading

• Mastering search
• Capturing notes
• Integrating with Org-mode

Dropbox provides 2GB of free storage that can be synchronized between multiple devices. MobileOrg can use Dropbox as a transfer backend as an alternative to WebDAV to make setup easier.

A screencast is available that illustrates how to setup MobileOrg from start to finish.

To get started with MobileOrg + Dropbox:

• You must first setup an account on http://www.dropbox.com
• Open MobileOrg, go to Settings, choose the Dropbox button at the top. Enter your email address and password, then click ‘Log in to Dropbox’.
• If login was successful, please proceed. Otherwise, correct your credentials/make sure you have network access, and retry.
• Upon successful login, a new folder, ~/Dropbox/MobileOrg will automatically be created.
• You should edit your Org-mode configuration to contain:

;; Set to the location of your Org files on your local system
(setq org-directory "~/org")
;; Set to the name of the file where new notes will be stored
(setq org-mobile-inbox-for-pull "~/org/flagged.org")
;; Set to <your Dropbox root directory>/MobileOrg.
(setq org-mobile-directory "~/Dropbox/MobileOrg")

• After restarting emacs/reparsing your configuration, run org-mobile-push. This will copy your Org files to ~/Dropbox/MobileOrg, which is where MobileOrg will read from.
• Go back to MobileOrg and click on the Outlines tab at the bottom, then click the Sync button in the upper right.

After capturing notes or making changes on the device to your Org files, be sure to sync in MobileOrg. Then run org-mobile-pull from Emacs to integrate your changes. After integrating, you can run org-mobile-push to make sure MobileOrg has access to the latest version of your files.

NOTE: If you already had a MobileOrg directory in your ~/Dropbox, a new folder will be created like MobileOrg (1). You should rename the newly created MobileOrg (1) folder to something that makes more sense, perhaps MobileOrg-staging before proceeding. Be sure your org-mobile-directory Emacs variable reflects this change.

ANOTHER NOTE: There is a bug in the current version that requires you to press ‘Enter’ on the iPhone keyboard after entering your password. If you click on ‘Log into Dropbox’ prior to pressing ‘Enter’, you will receive a login error message. This will be fixed in the next version.

LAST NOTE: If you are a Windows user, you will need to have md5sum.exe or sha1sum.exe in your system path before org-mobile-push will succeed. You can find either of them here: http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/coreutils.htm