#1779 Syncing notes across devices

[Christina Callicott]

I just started a new academic job, and in order to get all my previous research files on my new work laptop, I moved everything to OneDrive. Of course, in the process, over a decade of skim notes was lost. I would really like to be able to sync my notes from my old computer to OneDrive and then to the new computer so that I don't have to reinvent all that work. I saw a related discussion somewhere on this site but it's over my head. It would be great if this could be a fairly simple process.

[Christiaan Hofman]

I really don't see what else we can do. If you want to sync through something like OneDrive, you should either save Skim notes backups, or pdf bundles. Or you archive the files, which will preserve the notes.

[Christina Callicott]

Hi Christiaan,
Thank you for your response. Is there a way to do this in bulk? I have possibly hundreds of documents I’ve annotated over the years. It’s obviously not feasible to do either of those suggestions if I have to do it one by one. Is there not some way to create a system that syncs those external notes files?

Thank you,
Christina

[Christiaan Hofman]

You could do that using a shell script by making use of the skimnotes tool. There is some info on that on the Wiki. This also has some scripts to use the commands in bulk, though I am not sure whether this particular one is there. If you know shell scripts you could adapt one script for this. I will also look into it and try to make a script for this and link it there.

[Christiaan Hofman]

In fact the skimbulk script should do precisely this.

[Christina Callicott]

Hi Christiaan,
I don't know scripts, shell scripts, etc. I wouldn't even know where to start. I see the skimnotes tool page in the Wiki but that's all way over my head. Any hope for help?
Thanks,
Christina

[Christiaan Hofman]

Download the script skimbulk (linked on the Wiki). Put it, say, on your Desktop. Open Terminal.app, and type chmod a+x Desktop/skimbulk and hit Enter, to make it executable. Now in Terminal.app type something like Desktop/skimbulk get path/to/folder, where path/to/folder is the path to the folder containing PDFs that may have Skim notes, starting from your Home folder (a path is a series of containing folder names connected by /, starting from your Home folder). This should add .skim files for every PDF that has Skim notes, going recursively inside containing folders.