How do I load layouts from Dropbox?

Question

Hi there. I recently tried out MIDI Designer on a friend's iPad using my app store account. I turned on the automatic cloud backup IAP feature and successfully linked with my Dropbox.

After setting up MIDI Designer on my own iPad, I can't seem to actually download or access those files. I SEE all of the layout / page files in the main MIDI Designer Dropbox directory, and I do have a separate folder for each iPad containing their respective config files. But, when I click "Load Layout" from the configuration page or "Load Page" from the page editor, my files are nowhere to be found. And I see no option to "restore" from a backup or whatnot. I tried moving the files into the iPad-specific directory... no luck.

The heck am I doing wrong? Thanks!

-ewb

Answer 1

Hey there, the short answer (for now) is: 100% of the opening happens in DropBox, Google Drive, Mail or wherever you’re opening the file from. You’re looking for something like “Open in...” which, in Dropbox, requiers you to follow your nose through links that say “download” and then maybe “export.” See if this helps. For consistency, you can also just mail the file to yourself from the sharing app and open it from there.

This will take some poking around but these instructions are enough to get you started. Comment here on this answer and we can move you forward after you’ve tried again. Thanks!

NOTE: According to ewb, the exact steps for Dropbox 2018-12-10 are:

Select the file, select the 3 dots ( ... ) menu, "Export", "Open In...", "Copy to MIDI Designer".

Comments

Perfect, thanks!

For anyone else confused, the exact sequence with Dropbox was to select the file, select the 3 dots ( ... ) menu, "Export", "Open In...", "Copy to MIDI Designer".

Perhaps some reference to this process could be added to the MIDI Designer manual? As a lifelong, deeply nerdy computer nerd, this was significantly counterintuitive.

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Thanks ewb. We've copied your comment into this answer, which is quite well-indexed by Google. We need to get to wrangling the MD Manual again very soon, but specific Dropbox steps might not be in there. I respect that as a deep nerd this is counterintuitive, but I can also assure you that when you come back to this question in a year, this cannot seem BUT intuitive.

On the other hand: we include a function to mail layouts to yourself, and using the regular iOS Mail app  this is slightly more obvious.

Anyway, thanks for your patience and for feeding back!
Dan

Answer 2

Hey there, the short answer (for now) is: 100% of the opening happens in DropBox, Google Drive, Mail or wherever you’re opening the file from. You’re looking for something like “Open in...” which, in Dropbox, requiers you to follow your nose through links that say “download” and then maybe “export.” See if this helps. For consistency, you can also just mail the file to yourself from the sharing app and open it from there.

This will take some poking around but these instructions are enough to get you started. Comment here on this answer and we can move you forward after you’ve tried again. Thanks!

NOTE: According to ewb, the exact steps for Dropbox 2018-12-10 are:

Select the file, select the 3 dots ( ... ) menu, "Export", "Open In...", "Copy to MIDI Designer".