Method to deal with conflicted copies among group in Dropbox

Question

I work in a small group that uses Dropbox for temporary storage and collaboration. Files are constantly being updated. Occasionally I see from my notifications, conflicted copies appearing all over the place (people are saving/editing at the same time).

How can I deal with this (is there some locking/messaging system I can apply) ? I really do not want to be cleaning the conflicted copies up at the close of every business day.

Answer 1

This is not a feature in Dropbox but it could be. Please vote for it.

Answer 2

Dropbox isn't really set up for this sort of thing. While they have implemented sharing it's not very robust in cases of frequent changes from multiple sources.

What you really need is a document version control system. People would need to check out documents in order to modify them. A good system would also facilitate merges in cases of editing conflicts.

Not a real answer to your question, but I don't think you're going to get a Dropbox solution.

Answer 3

You can use Conflicted Copy Pro. It's an office add-in that stops user A from opening a file the user B already has open.

Answer 4

Consider a modern true file versioning system such as git.
There are gui tools available that make such systems much easier to use for non-technical folks, such as gitx (OSX) or gitg (Linux). Also make sure that folks are not already using any kind of git, svn, etc. system (if they are programmers) as those two approaches, simultaneously will lead to major conflicts.

Folks will need training, the amount will depend on how technical are. As the business grows and people develop both more documents and more technical skills a more formal approach to document changes becomes more important. This is an area where the more formal technical approach already used by programmers can be adapted and adopted by others in the organization.