change session backup path without changing cloud sync

Jürgen Kortt

I have searched in the forum a while, but didnt find useful answers to my problem.
I have setup cloud syncing via dropbox and it works well. But my problem is: Why session backup files are stored in the dropbox folder. In the Settings for session backups I can see the dropboxfolder and the subfolder backups, but I cannot change this.
So I have questions:

Why session.xml is not synced but the referenzed backups of unsaved files are written to the cloud.
why I cant change this path
If possible, how do I change this path WITHOUT affecting rest of cloud sync (so changing the base cloud path to a local patth is not an useful option)

The main problems are 2 things:

editing very big files (100MB and bigger) will result in very large cloud uploads, which are not neccessary at all
editing files with confidential content, which never have to leave my working laptop…but they are uploaded in this backup loder to dropbox

PeterJones

@Jürgen-Kortt ,

Sorry no one has replied in the last week (though it looks like you didn’t come back after your initial login anyway).

Why session.xml is not synced

Unfortunately, despite a few requests (#4696 and #5317), the session.xml hasn’t been included in the cloud backup folder. “Why” is unknown.

but the referenced backups of unsaved files are written to the cloud.

That is an oddity, all right.

To get the session.xml to save in a cloud folder, instead of using Notepad++ “cloud” feature, you could use the newer -settingsDir option – beause session.xml is included with that option… so if you used `notepad++.exe -settingsDir=“c:\path\to\cloud”, that would at least keep the session.xml in the same cloud directory as the other settings.

Unfortunately, that won’t help with the periodic backups ending up in the cloud. There currently isn’t a way in Notepad++ to configure that directory separately from the Cloud-checkbox or -settingsDir option.

However, you might be able to get around that. Windows has a concept known as a Directory Junction (similar to a symbolic or hard link in linux), which allows you to use a name in one location that really points to another (it’s more low-level than a shortcut .lnk file, and works in circumstances like this where a .lnk isn’t sufficient). So assume your cloud folder (either via Cloud settings or -settingsDir) is c:\path\to\cloud\Notepad++ ; but you want the periodic backup of unsaved files to go to c:\path\to\backup. You would bring up your cmd.exe prompt in the c:\path\to\cloud\Notepad++ directory; if backup exists as a subdirectory, rename it; then in cmd.exe, type mklink /J backup c:\path\to\backup – a dir should now show you that “directory”. From the windows/command-line viewpoint, c:\path\to\cloud\Notepad++\backup is treated just like a directory. But I don’t know if the contents of the junction will be synced to your cloud provider or not. I don’t necessarily have your Cloud provider, so I cannot test that for you. But it’s worth a try.

PeterJones

@Jürgen-Kortt ,

BTW: this seems to be similar to issue#10086 from “WhiteChairFromIkea”, who asks that the developers make the periodic-backup unsaved-files backup separately configurable (by making the Backup > .Session Snapshot and Periodic Backup > Backup path: editable instead of read-only)

I added my 2¢ to that issue, including your use-case and a similar use-case where `%AppData% is on a small c:-drive SSD but the user wants large periodic-backup files to go on the larger d:-drive HDD which has more room for 100Mb files.