Sharing a Single TurboBid Database with Microsoft OneDrive

Modified on Tue, 28 Nov, 2023 at 11:45 AM

Microsoft OneDrive Cloud image going to multiple devices.

While you can use OneDrive to share a single database, there are possible consequences. OneDrive may not fully sync the database file.

Your database file size is a very big file.

OneDrive starts uploading the database file by every small change. This makes your database file not accessible when OneDrive is uploading your database to the cloud.

OneDrive is not aware of TurboBid or what type of data changes were made. If just a single bit of database changes, OneDrive uploads the entire database.

If you work on a project and have new data, and your other computer opens and closes TurboBid, it makes other computer's database the new database and starts to upload it. Just opening TurboBid makes changes to database, not just the data that you enter, but other aspects of the database system file, which triggers the OneDrive sync process.

OneDrive is a space for storing backup or personal file. It should not be used as a data collaboration tool or protocol.

You should not put your live database in OneDrive where you and your boss share the database between separate computers.

Please make sure that you do one of the following:

When you're working on TurboBid:
- Pause OneDrive so that you do not receive the SQL timeout error.
- Move your database out of one drive and paste it to the TurboBid default location: C:\Documents\TurboBid 4.0\4.0 Database.
- When you're finished working on TurboBid, copy the database from the default location of C:\Documents\TurboBid 4.0\4.0 Database, and paste it into OneDrive. This will allow you to share your database with your boss.

Sharing a Single TurboBid Database with Microsoft OneDrive

If you would like to use TurboBid Estimating Software on multiple computers that are not on a

local area network (LAN), you can use Microsoft’s OneDrive. OneDrive will automatically synchronize

TurboBid’s database between all of your computers.

The only restriction is that only one computer can make changes to the database at any given time. By using OneDrive, each of your computer’s will have a database installed on it’s hard drive, as well as an identical copy of the database stored in the cloud.

OneDrive comes preinstalled on Windows 10 and Windows 8.1. (Note: OneDrive is not supported on Windows XP.)

If you don’t already have OneDrive on your computer, you can download Microsoft OneDrive.

To use a OneDrive database in TurboBid, you first have to upload the database to OneDrive:

You can find the TurboBid database file on your computer at ‘This PC\Documents\TurboBid 4.0\4.0 Database’.
- If you use the electrical database, you want to upload the ‘TurboBid3.mdf’ file to OneDrive.
- If you use the plumbing database, you want to upload the ‘TurboBid3 Plumbing.mdf’ file to OneDrive.

For information on topics such as how to upload documents to OneDrive, how to download your OneDrive documents to your computer, etc.

After you have your database uploaded to OneDrive, and have downloaded the OneDrive database to all of your computers that you use TurboBid on, you then need to set TurboBid to use the OneDrive database (The OneDrive database can be found in your computers OneDrive folder):

Open TurboBid and then go to ‘File > Select Database’.
- After you chose to close your current database, you will be able to browse for, and select, the TurboBid database in your computer’s OneDrive folder.

Now, as long as you have your computer’s OneDrive files set to automatically synchronize with your OneDrive account and an internet connection, when exiting TurboBid on one computer, the database would be synced to OneDrive. This means that, as long as all of your computer’s are using the OneDrive database, the next time you use TurboBid on your other computers, all of the databases would reflect the changes made on other computers. You don’t need to transfer the file or do any work to store it anywhere. OneDrive will automatically save the changes to the database, and update the database file on the other computers.