Shared Sync Not Working with View Only Access

[Donna62]

I’m trying to share a database with someone. Sharing works just fine when giving the other person read/write access, but if I try to limit the access to View Only, it won’t sync correctly for the other person. They see it listed as a shared database, but when they open it and finish the first sync, it shows no forms or records. If they try to sync manually after that, it gets stuck at 1.7% and never finishes syncing.

[Donna62]

I’m sorry, I forgot to include that I am using iCloud for syncing.

Also, with further testing I’ve found that I cannot give them full access initially and then change it to View Only access as a workaround. When I change it, the sync fails and I have to restore full access for them to be able to sync.

[Donna62]

This problem still exists in version 1.0.5 of TFP.

[Brendan]

I haven’t worked on the View Only aspect of multi-account iCloud syncing. It’s on my to-do list. Sorry about that.

[Donna62]

I’ve come up with a workaround for TFP 1.0.5 that is working for now.

1. Have the owner set up read-write sharing and have the nonowner who should not have read-write access sync the database to all their devices. The database will only sync with full read-write access.
2. Have the owner of the database change the access rights for the database to read only after the database has been synced to all the nonowner’s devices.

The nonowner will still be permitted to make changes to the local copies of the database, but those changes will not sync and the nonowner will get an annoying message about it at every attempted sync. Unfortunately, if the nonowner wants the annoying messages to stop, the owner will have to set the database back to read-write access, the nonowner will have to delete the local copies of the database and downlod the read-write copy, then the owner will have to reset it to view-only, just as in the steps above. In my test, just deleting the local copy and trying to download the view-only copy didn’t work, just as the original view-only copy won’t download.

This method is not ideal, but it allows my husband to search his view-only copy of the database. So far in my tests with TFP 1.0.5, minor changes I make to the database will now sync to his view-only copy. (I haven’t tried it with major changes.) As long as the nonowner doesn’t make any accidental changes to their local copy, it seems to be working.

In other database programs I’ve used, the nonowner would not be able to save any changes they made to their view-only local copy of the database, or their changes would be overwritten with the owner’s version at the next sync, which would be preferable to the current sync error messages, but please let me know if this is the way editing and sync are supposed to be working now with view-only copies of the database.

I hope this is clear enough. If you have any questions or have anything you want me to test, please let me know.

Thank you.

[Author]

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