Database Location

Found an article in an eM Client article which states the following:

The default database location is in the eM Client folder under your user profile in hidden folders AppData\Roaming (the path is usually C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\eM Client). To change it, please navigate to Menu > Settings > General > Storage where you can adjust the database folder location. However, as the disclaimer in the settings warns: when you change the location, your original database will not be transferred. Instead a new database will be created there.

If you’d like to transfer your data, please first change the location in the settings, turn eM Client off and then manually move the database folder from the original location into the new one. Please note that eM Client must stay turned off during this process. Check for eM Client or mailclient.exe in the Task Manager and if you see a process with either of these names, end it before you proceed.

So my question is: Can this database be stored on Dropbox so that I have access to it from both my Windows10 laptop as well as my Apple iMac?

You can store your database wherever you like. If you put it inside the “magic” folder that syncs to Dropbox, it will sync to Dropbox like any other set of files. And then you can access those files on another computer.

That being said, there’s at least two caveats:

  • Every time you use EMC and sync to Dropbox, it could take a long time. There’s close to three hundred files in the EMC database directory and they all (or most all) get updated when you run EMC. It depends on how much you’ve downloaded to the database, etc., but (for instance) my db directory totals about 710MB.

  • The database format used on Windows may not be compatible with the database format used on Mac.

Personally, I wouldn’t do it, even if Windows/Mac database format is the same. Moreover, it’s not necessary (at least for emails) if your emails are accessed via IMAP.

Calendars and contacts can also have a web service central storage such as Google.If everything you use is held in a remote service location, there’s no need to share the local database files. If you have a bunch of stuff in Local Folders (like I do!), well, that’s different.

Thanks, I was kind of hoping that it might be a bit less complicated as I too have all my emails that I keep, on local folders. Both my current client, Postbox (which allows you to keep the local folders in Dropbox) as well as Thunderbird (on which Postbox is based) which allows for this also.

Wondering how it would be possible to contact eM Client Support (I currently have only a “free” license) to check on this issue before purchasing a pro license. My thought would be to pay for the pro version, but only if it was possible to share the database between the two platforms, Windows and OSX. Seems to me, that if (with a pro license) they allow you to install the client on multiple devices, the developers would have allowed for the ability to somehow share the database. If one were to install the pro version on two Windows desktop machines, another one on a Windows laptop, and say two more installs on an OSX based iMac and a MacBook Pro, it would be pretty silly to not think folks would want to see the same set of emails on all machines.

I don’t know all the licensing details, but I do know that a license is good for one device only.

As for sharing the database between Windows and Mac, I don’t know if the dbs are compatible. But there are others here who may know the answer to that.

Another option might be to establish a shared file location that’s available on your local network and host the EMC database files there. That doesn’t answer the Windows/Mac question, but you could access the database from multiple Windows machines at least (again, with licenses)

That too raises its own set of concerns such as whether or not EMC has implemented the ability for multiple, concurrent access to the databases files. If not, you’d have to run one client at a time.

No, you can’t have the database in a cloud synced folder unless the cloud sync only runs when eM Client is closed. Otherwise you will end up with a corrupt or empty database You also can’t use a single database simultaneously with more than one installation of eM Client, so storing it on a network share and accessing from two computers at the same time is not possible. And even if they take turns accessing the database, they will have to be the exact same version of eM Client accessing it.

The best solution is just to setup eM Client with IMAP or Exchange which is designed to allow access simultaneously from many devices or applications.

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