Backup to Google Drive

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26 comments

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    George Page

    I manually exported the HTML file and dropped it into GDrive. Simple, but not automatic. Support has told me that it is not currently on the radar, so for the time being, I will just export regularly and save to GDrive

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    George Page

    Question...what is better to export OPML or HTML?

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    Daniel Jacob Smith

    I always export in OPML; it seems to be the most widely compatible and standard format for importing into other outliners or even back into Workflowy itself, should there ever be a problem.

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    Benjamin N Dilts

    I just want to add a +1 to this request, Google Drive backup would be great, and OneDrive backup even better. I don't use Dropbox anymore.

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    ICT World Policy P M

    Possibly a silly question but why, given, that it's already in the cloud, do you need to back it up?

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    TJ Leverette

    +1 for this feature request. I pay for added Gdrive storage but don't have paid Dropbox (free tier only) so backup to Google Drive fits my tech topology better, and I suspect I'm not alone.  Thanks, /New Pro User

     

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    Victor Litvin

    +1 for this feature request

    As for me text format is fine. Independent backups are "must have". Not only something can go terribly wrong on workflowy side, but you can also accidentally delete a chunk of data and not notice it soon enough, or same thing but with person with edit access to your list.

    Alternatively some sort of permanent "export all" URL is fine too, as you can organize it yourself with ifttt, for example.

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    ICT World Policy P M

    So  it would be nice to have it exported to Google drive. Now I'm paying for this product and it's quite good. But, given that the rate of changes to it are very very slow - which is also good because it works so doesn't need to be fixed - I can't believe that Workflowy's technology resource is overwhelmed with work.

    So Can Workflowy tell us why it can't introduce this feature other than 'hey it's not on the radar'.

    So on behalf of other users can I respond  well please put it on the radar or give a GOOD reason why you won't.

    If for the want of a couple of hours / days / weeks work you are putting tens of thousands of users out then that is poor customer service.

    I would like to back it up to Google Drive. I use Google drive for business and personal stuff.  Do I really need to spend $70 per year JUST to back up workflowy (times all the customer base who may want to do this) just so you won't engage?

    regards

     

    Paul

     

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    Frank (Workflowy Support)

    Hi @ICT,

    This is not on our radar :-(

    We are planning to have a feature where users can restore their own deleted lists (and we do back up our servers every day)

    In addition, in the event of an unfortunate mishap, we are able to restore accidentally deleted lists.

    WorkFlowy has been incredibly hard at work and has been pushing out new features at a rate. As of today you will see "board" mode (still to be announced), polished and ready for the masses... besides the new left bar and dates feature this year alone.

    The Pro clocks in at $4.99/ month or $49/ year.You may be on the Teams plan. 

    ~ Frank

     

     

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    Marcos Dias Alves

    +1 for Google Drive as an option for the backups.

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    Frank (Workflowy Support)

    Marcos,

    Dropbox backups (and the like) will most likely become redundant in the not-too-distant future... 

    https://workflowy.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360037130311/comments/360010145192

     

     

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    ademoor

    Frank, WorkFlowy is absolutely marvelous, but it's backing up via expensive additionally required Dropbox (and the inability to restore selected accidentally deleted sub-lists) are a great weakness. Especially since for many of us our whole working lives - including shared lists for clients - now live in the tool, this essential piece of functionality not being there keeps being a great worry...

    About a year ago, you said "dropbox backups (and the like) will most likely become redundant in the not-too-distant future". Please tell us that future is about to arrive very soon now! :-) 

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    Frank (Workflowy Support)

    > Please tell us that future is about to arrive very soon now! :-) 

    I think we were included in the "Great Reset"... so we're going to have to see things from the about-a-year-ago self. Distant future for me is like 20-30 years... so "not-too-distant" would be about 5-10 years.

    But seriously, it is becoming increasingly important for us to implement, because our CEO is the only one, who upon request, is able to restore lists from our servers. We're getting there. Necessity is the mother of invention...

    One can also export manually at the frequency desired. Dropbox is just automatic. Most people use free Dropbox accounts.

     

     

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    ademoor

    Thanks for the update, Frank. Yes, I use the Dropbox solution too, but their free account only has limited space and is eternally full. And you know the joke about manual backups: they never happen! :-) As a temporary solution, perhaps you could also add the opportunity to backup to Google Drive. Many people who don't have a paid account on Dropbox, do have one over there. Ultimately, however, the real solution would be to be able to do a rollback or a selective restore of changes between dates X and Y, with backups securely stored on the WorkFlowy servers. Will keep dreaming the dream until then! ;-)

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    Michael Urban

    +1 on Google Drive backup as an alternative to Dropbox.

    Frank, I know you back up your servers and can restore my data in the event something goes wrong, but I don't know many people who are comfortable with only keeping their data on one cloud service.

    1. Workflowy could suddenly go out of business. Obviously, I hope that never happens because Workflowy is the best organizational tool I've ever used in my life. But if it does, I don't want to lose access to tons of data that I probably can't recreate.
    2. Workflowy could get mad at me and ban me or lock my account :p Again, I hope that never happens, but if it ever would, again, I don't want to loose access to tons of data that I might not be able to recreate.

    Just two examples of why the fact that Workflowy maintains backups of my data and could restore it in the event of a catastrophic failure is not really enough to make me feel my data is safe.

    I know I can use Dropbox, but as a Chromebook user, all of my other stuff is on Google Drive. And besides, Dropbox is kind of pricy and stingy compared to other cloud drive services. And not very convenient when all of my other stuff is on Google Drive.

    Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but this should be a pretty easy feature to implement, shouldn't it? You already do it with Dropbox. Seems like it would only require adding a few lines of extra code to use the Google API for saving the file instead of the Dropbox one.

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    Matt

    I also think having the option to save backups to Google Drive would be helpful.

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    Christopher L Hoppes

    My Dropbox is full and I already pay for Google Drive. It's frustrating to know I have available space that I pay for but can't use it to backup to it. Google Drive Backup for Workflowy would be incredibly useful.

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    Jeff Sielaff

    My situation is the same as Christopher's.  Google Drive Backup, please.

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    Lisa Johnson

    Plus one for me. I would accept almost any DropBox alternative--Google Drive, One Drive or Apple Cloud, all of which I currently pay for extra space! I just refuse to pay for DropBox as I don't like the company/service, and they are stingy (as another poster above mentioned). They only provide 2 GB of free storage, they don't provide any diagnostics to show how your space is used, and then they constantly email you to pay for more space, which feels a bit scammy?

    I have been using Workflowy since 2015 and I am officially out of backup space on DropBox. Today I moved all of my Workflowy backup files to my OneDrive to start over on DropBox again. It seems like it should be easy to offer at least one other option in today's environment? Or at least pick a better option than DropBox?

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    Denan Kurejsepi

    Plus one for me as well please, back up anywhere but drop box. Will accept anything else. Will accept even a huge plain text local storage file we can back up ourselves.

    Please anything other than dropbox

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    Frank (Workflowy Support)

    Hi Denan,

    You can export your entire account manually by going to the Settings menu top right > Export all...

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    Christopher L Hoppes

    Is there a timeline for adding Google Drive as a backup option?

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    Frank (Workflowy Support)

    Hi Christopher, 

    We don't plan to add Google Drive as a backup option. 

    We do back up our servers every 24 hours and in addition we've created a trash can where one can recover deleted items. 

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    ademoor

    Thanks for the explanation, Frank, 

    Still, I think there is a use case for Google Drive backup to be added: it may take a long time to discover that - possibly a very important branch - was accidentally deleted. With that "long term backup" you can then go back to a version of, say, a couple of months ago and restore that deleted branch that is no longer easily accessible by reaching out to your helpdesk or going back in the trash can (is it even posisble to easily go back months in time without having to scroll through every update that happened since?)

    NB You _do_ offer the Dropbox backup next to the mentioned 24 hours-server backup and trash can. Given that many of us have only very small free Dropbox accounts that means regular manual weeding there that could be prevented if an automatic backup feed to a Google Drive many of us do have were also to exist. 

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    Frank (Workflowy Support)

    Thank you for this, @ademoor!

    I will post this for the team to look at and think over. There are several features we have which once upon a time we were not going to build... so this is not off the table. 

    Internal reference 

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    ademoor

    Thanks, Frank, appreciated!

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