Save Projects Locally on Hard Drive

Comments: 21

• 01 Dec, '17
  Violet

  I would love this in addition to cloud storage. The more backups the better.

• 02 Dec, '17
  Silje

  This is so important to me. I am seriously considering signing up for Dabble, but the one thing that is holding me back is the fact that I cannot a) save my project locally *and* b) turn off cloud storage. If I'm not able to turn off cloud storage, I won't be using Dabble, sadly...

• 10 Feb, '18
  Breanna

  Yes, I really really want this feature! What if your company shutters and we lose cloud storage access, I don't want to risk it... but Dabble is so awesome and you seem dedicated to adding features so I am already using it for my novel.. But I would feel more comfortable if I could save a local copy of my writing to my hard drive. ;)

• 20 Apr, '18
  Emma

  Definitely. I sometimes go to a place to write where there is no internet and it makes things difficult that i can only use Dabble when online.

• 05 May, '18
  Miri

  I suppose this suggestion, and I feel it wouldn't be terribly hard once a comprehensive export is possible. Making it an automatic hard drive save in conjunction with the auto-cloud sync would be a super bonus!

• 05 Oct, '18
  GK Sudo

  This is the only thing stopping me from purchasing Dabble.

• 16 Nov, '18
  Jacob from Dabble Admin

  In addition to exporting your manuscript to Word and text, you can now export the full data for your Dabble projects in JSON format.
  
  And to clear up any confusion, your project data is stored locally and synced to the cloud. This is different than being 100% cloud-based because you *can* continue to write offline and when you get back online it will sync up.
  
  I realize some of you want a 100% offline desktop version of Dabble without any cloud access. I will leave this open for that.

• 06 Dec, '18
  Cedar

  What programs are JSON format used in (JavaScript Object Notation)?
  I mostly want to be able to automatically export/back up 100% of the project to a folder with my folders, scenes, plotting, and notecards intact, so if I need to access a note I made about a particular scene 10 years from now, I have a straightforward way to do that.

• 04 Jun, '19
  Natacha

  Yes, please! Unfortunately, I lost around 1h work because I didn't realise my connection was down :( I do love this software and I really want it to be my main place for writing but I can risk losing work for something so silly.

• 05 Jun, '19
  Jacob from Dabble Admin

  This should only happen if you Sign Out from the menu before Dabble has had a chance to sync. If you close it, you're fine, because everything is stored locally. If you lost words, reach out to support to see if you can get them restored.

• 14 Jun, '19
  J George

  Hugely disappointed to see that requests for Google Drive sync and the ability to make local back-ups stretch back to 2017!! Until these features can be implemented, I just cannot use Dabble, I'm really disappointed. Novels are just too precious to be dependent on your own cloud storage.

• 17 Jun, '19
  Jacob from Dabble Admin

  Josie, mobile and many other features have stretched back to 2017 when Dabble was launched. Dabble is still very young. Unlike other industries where new companies can start with big investments dollars, we have to grow the slow way, gaining enough customers in our part-time until we can support one full-time employee, then two, then a team. We will get there, but you have to understand, the things we haven't done yet aren't because we don't think they're important.

• 16 Jan, '20
  Gunnar Helliesen

  I'd like a way to automatically backup *all* of my Dabble projects every N hours (configurable), to a destination of my choosing. For example Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, or Amazon S3 bucket. If I had to choose just one: Dropbox.
  
  Also, I'm not sure how much use a backup in JSON format would be to me. I'd prefer RTF or Word, because those are universally supported by other applications.
  
  The point would be to have a way to quickly recover from some form of disaster where Dabble is offline.

• 05 May, '20
  Jack Mulcahy

  I would certainly use this feature. I already have folders set up in my Dropbox. It would be great to be able to keep files in the same master folder.

• 20 Jul, '20
  Greg Kenny

  Even knowing where the local files of a dabble project are stored would help immensely, or if we could specify where local copies should reside. Appears to only be stored in system folders.

• 20 Jun, '21
  Sarah

  I want to be able to export all my notes to my harddrive. Not just the manuscript.

• 25 Oct, '21
  Mrs D P C Smith

  I am looking for an app that enables me to write articles and stories, print them from my own printer and sore them on my iPad. Does the Dabble app permit me to do this?

• 23 Jan, '22
  Dani

  One thing I did was copied and pasted my script into a word folder. It's a little bit more work but at least you will have a hard copy, other than just cloud storage :)

• 04 Feb, '22
  Calliaphone

  I think this would be great - so long as the format was transferable to other apps (eg text files). if the download was only in a proprietary format, much of the benefit would be lost. I also wonder if this should be merged with the import/export feature request, as they cover really similar territory. or if not merged, please can the developers consider them at the same time, as they are both related to future proofing and transferability. many thanks.

• 24 May
  Vince N

  I don't mind exporting as a Word file to my local hard drive. I'm not sure that the export needs to be in 'Dabble format.' I export my Dabble Manuscript that way. I would like to export characters, research, and notes as well. And again, exporting as a Word file is just fine. What I'm looking for is security. Over the past fifteen years, I have had issues with Scrivener where Scrivener files from ten years ago no longer open in Scrivener. Supposedly, some of this is from saving Scrivener files in one cloud service and then dragging them into another (evidently Google Drive caused much of my problem). Scrivener says that each cloud service has its own way of encrypting and could corrupt the core text files, which it apparently did. Today, I like to save my work once a day, or every other day, by exporting the text file to local hard drive in a familiar format such as Word. (PDF would be fine too.) I then move the Word file to an external hard drive.

• 10 Sep
  Vince N

  Would autosaving/syncing to my local hard drive instead of syncing to the "Dabble cloud" solve the "error syncing" messages I currently get? I get about one -three errors per hour and I have to restart Dabble. It's becoming a nuisance.