Most people, probably, won't care where the freezer book folder is but if, like us, you have more than one PC on which you want to have access to your freezer book you can share the details by sharing a folder on one of your PCs.
You could use Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or Dropbox or what-ever but that would seriously affect the locking mechanism. When you start up the Freezer Book V3 application for the first time on one of your PCs make sure that you change folder to your chosen shared folder and create the My Freezer Book Items V3 folder there. Then, when you install and start the Freezer Book V3 application on the other PCs you won't need to create the folder; just navigate to it.
The locking mechanism which is built into this app protects against two PCs trying to update the inventory at the same time. Essentially, when someone opens the freezer book the inventory file is locked to them which means that if someone else tries to open it on another PC they will be told that it is only available Read/Only. As soon as the first user finishes and closes the app the lock will be undone and the Read/Only user will be given the opportunity of getting Read/Write access.
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Now, in late 2023, we have a Windows 11 laptop which is switched on most of the time and two desktops: one of which has Windows 11 and the other has Windows 10. I can't, for the life of me, get file sharing to work between Windows 10 and Windows 11. Windows 10 - 10 is fine and Windows 11 - 11 is fine but not Windows 10 - 11. :-C
In our case the master copy if the freezer inventory is on the laptop (Win 11) so I've implemented a Dual save facility and we use this to save the inventory to Dropbox. I imagine that Onedrive or Google drive or whatever would do just as well.
On the host PC |
Right click on the freezer book window, hover over Change Freezer Book folder and click Dual save. This brings up a Choose Folder dialog box, navigate to your dropbox folder and make a My Freezer Book Items V3 folder and select it. You need to share this folder in Read/Write mode on your LAN and you need to ask dropbox to share it with the PC where Windows file sharing doesn't work.. |
On the PC where file sharing works Ok |
Right click on the freezer book window, hover over Change Freezer Book folder and click Dual save. This brings up a Choose Folder dialog box, navigate to My Freezer Book Items V3 in your dropbox folder and select it. |
On the PC where file sharing doesn't work |
Right click on the freezer book window, click Change Freezer Book folder. This brings up a Choose Folder dialog box - navigate to the My Freezer Book Items V3 on your dropbox folder and select it. |
This means that on both the host PC and the PC where file sharing works Ok the MikeSoft Freezer book app will save the freezer inventory to the dropbox as well as to the host PC's SSD and the PC where file sharing doesn't work views the freezer inventory on the dropbox folder.
One problem remains: if the user on the PC where file sharing doesn't work adds a food item or deletes one it will not be reflected in the inventory which is stored on the host PC's inventory. To avoid this problem this PC should always be forced into read only mode. To do this right click on the freezer book window and click Restricted access. This results in the freezer book always opening in read only mode. To set it back to normal click on Restricted access again.
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