Is there a WiFi folder sync to SD card app? - Windows Phone 8 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting

Hi
Is there a folder sync app to SD card say from a ftp server?
Keen to sync apps from a nas to my wife's Nokia windows 8 phone?
Thanks

I'd normally put this in the Q&A forum, but whatever... So far as I know, there's no app to do a really proper sync, but you could probably get close enough for specific use cases. Apps are only allowed to see files on the SD card if those files have extensions that the app has registered to handle, and apps are limited to 20 such registrations. Consequently, it's not possible (with an official, third-party store-published app) to build a truly general-purpose syncing app. However, you might find one that can do the formats you care about in particular.
By the way, yes, this is total BS. Not sure what the heck MS was thinking with these restrictions... they are decidedly unhelpful to users

Related

[Q] Access SD card as Windows drive

Good morning guys!
After buying one for my personal use months ago (best purchase ever) my department here at work just bought 150 P880's.
We have a small issue with our technicians who are trying to sync documents directly to the SD card, so my question is:
Is there any way to force the SD card to appear as a normal Windows drive? Rather then another 'Portable Media Player' with folders?
I've considered a few ways to do the sync (FTP server etc) but seems way to complicated. The company frowns on the use of cloud services like dropbox with good reason so that's not an option at the moment.
(All are running JB 4.2.1)
mhouston100 said:
Good morning guys!
After buying one for my personal use months ago (best purchase ever) my department here at work just bought 150 P880's.
We have a small issue with our technicians who are trying to sync documents directly to the SD card, so my question is:
Is there any way to force the SD card to appear as a normal Windows drive? Rather then another 'Portable Media Player' with folders?
I've considered a few ways to do the sync (FTP server etc) but seems way to complicated. The company frowns on the use of cloud services like dropbox with good reason so that's not an option at the moment.
(All are running JB 4.2.1)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope. At this time is not workaround to appear <Internal Memory> and <External Sdcard> as disks on Windows PC.
Only appear at subdisks of device <P880>.
mhouston100 said:
Good morning guys!
After buying one for my personal use months ago (best purchase ever) my department here at work just bought 150 P880's.
We have a small issue with our technicians who are trying to sync documents directly to the SD card, so my question is:
Is there any way to force the SD card to appear as a normal Windows drive? Rather then another 'Portable Media Player' with folders?
I've considered a few ways to do the sync (FTP server etc) but seems way to complicated. The company frowns on the use of cloud services like dropbox with good reason so that's not an option at the moment.
(All are running JB 4.2.1)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You would need an option to mount the sd card as external storage, and not via MTP. But this is currently not supported from our kernels
Try this one http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=32885144
Sent from my tf101

[Q] Apps on SD with Interop Unlock?

With Interop Unlock, there's any chance to install or move apps on SD cards?
Currently testing this out. Games won't work too well on an SD card unless you own a class 10
Could you post which registry key to change to install on SD?
Its not simply a registry key.
It's not even about wether it is class 10 or not. WP7 devices had huge problems with their internal SD cards due to the fact that the random access time was terrible. The SD card class tells you only about transfer rate though.
StevieBallz said:
It's not even about wether it is class 10 or not. WP7 devices had huge problems with their internal SD cards due to the fact that the random access time was terrible. The SD card class tells you only about transfer rate though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yep. random access is worse on most (big) class 10 cards afaik
It should be possible. You might have to install the app on your phone. Create the directory on the SD card and move the files to the SD card. And find a way to redirect all entries from the phone to the SD card. Access time shouldn't be a big factor, because windows phone apps load into the phones memory. This is all speculation though. I don't think you can install from the store to the phone. Unless there's a way to change the install path of apps in the registry. Again, all speculation.
Sent from my Nokia 521 using XDA Windows Phone 8 App
Access time was a huge issue with SD cards on WP7. And it was "supported" there. I don't assume it would have become less of an issue on an OS that does NOT support it.
aclegg2011 said:
It should be possible. You might have to install the app on your phone. Create the directory on the SD card and move the files to the SD card. And find a way to redirect all entries from the phone to the SD card. Access time shouldn't be a big factor, because windows phone apps load into the phones memory. This is all speculation though. I don't think you can install from the store to the phone. Unless there's a way to change the install path of apps in the registry. Again, all speculation.
Sent from my Nokia 521 using XDA Windows Phone 8 App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've got the same thought recently. If it would be possible to create a junction link in Phone\Data\programs, then it should work, cause windows doesn't really "know" that junctions are only links, it handles this as a directory...
on a "normal" Windows it must be a shell command like
mklink /j C:\Data\programs\{GUID from App} D:\{copy of the entire GUID-App-Directory from C:\Data\programs}
sorry for my "poor" description, but maybe someone got an idea...?
You all are missing a really critical problem: apps (unless they have ID_CAP_PUBLIC_FOLDER_FULL or similar) cannot actually access the SD card (ID_CAP_REMOVABLESTORAGE goes through an out-of-process RPC service; the app itself still can't access the card). Trust me, moving an app's binaries and data files to a location that the app cannot access does *not* end well (in related news, I can't launch Calculator on my phone anymore).
Oh, by the way, symlinks require some registry tweaks (in HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem) to work. Otherwise, you get these nasty and useless error messages about the link being "disabled" if you try to do anything with it (creating it works, but not much else). This probably won't affect hardlinks or junctions, though.

[Q] File manager officially confirmed?

I don't know if anyone voted for new features for WP8, but if you did, you should get mail from admins that file manager is now available.
Check it here:
http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/f...ons/3365632-add-file-manager-to-windows-phone
Also I've got mail for disabling auto rotation:
http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/f...tions/suggestions/2282917-disable-auto-rotate
Anyone know what is all that about? If it's on some new update, it wouldn't say it's available now.
head0 said:
I don't know if anyone voted for new features for WP8, but if you did, you should get mail from admins that file manager is now available.
Check it here:
http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/f...ons/3365632-add-file-manager-to-windows-phone
Also I've got mail for disabling auto rotation:
http://windowsphone.uservoice.com/f...tions/suggestions/2282917-disable-auto-rotate
Anyone know what is all that about? If it's on some new update, it wouldn't say it's available now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Great news.
In addition to the update on uservoice (http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/file-manager-coming-to-windows-phone-8-2-12-2013/)
there is a report that it will be coming in WP8.1 in Q2 2014 http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/file-manager-coming-to-windows-phone-8-2-12-2013/
I'm on android but I will definitely check back on WP when this happens.
CSMR said:
Great news.
In addition to the update on uservoice (http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/file-manager-coming-to-windows-phone-8-2-12-2013/)
there is a report that it will be coming in WP8.1 in Q2 2014 http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/file-manager-coming-to-windows-phone-8-2-12-2013/
I'm on android but I will definitely check back on WP when this happens.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And what you gonna do with the jpg file, move/copy where if only the hubs can open it? Useless feature.
djtonka said:
And what you gonna do with the jpg file, move/copy where if only the hubs can open it? Useless feature.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If MS implemented this feature so that the file manager would only show "hubs" and only allow you to move things in folders within these hubs, they would have to be real idiots.
A file manager means having user documents accessible by programs. Pretty much if you have one, you have the other. And ordinary people understand what a file manager is, so the request is always for a file manager, even though having a user documents folder accessible by programs is more important.
CSMR said:
If MS implemented this feature so that the file manager would only show "hubs" and only allow you to move things in folders within these hubs, they would have to be real idiots.
A file manager means having user documents accessible by programs. Pretty much if you have one, you have the other. And ordinary people understand what a file manager is, so the request is always for a file manager, even though having a user documents folder accessible by programs is more important.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As I have previously stated to all the QQ threads on this forum, windows phone does not need a file manager like windows 8 has.
As long as third party apps can asociate with the files they need to open, we will be fine, because developers can detect files on the phone very easily using the Microsoft API. The biggest problem is not the lack of a file manager, is the lack of permissions to allow third party apps to open files which are restricted by the system, like mp3 files.
If apps had full access to SD cards and the user file system, everybody would be happy.
Given how the API seems to be building around, this file manager will be restricted to hubs and third party apps will still not be able to open whatever files they want to.
On the other hand, they might give us a SDK update, but there are no news on the developer site...
Oh, I still disagree with that, quite a bit in fact.
Even leaving it limited to the "user" parts of the phone, there's lots of obvious cases for a file browser / manager.
* A simple one would be to provide an easy way to correct problems like duplicated files, renaming documents, copying a music file to the "ringtones" folder, and so on. Plus of course the ability to categorize and organize files using folders. Basically, the stuff you can do from a PC over USB.
* A little bit more advanced, but still pretty useful and obvious, would be the ability to open files (into whatever app the user wants) from a central location, rather than needing to go to the app first and hope that the app has a way to open the file. This is especially obvious when one considers downloaded files, which currently can only be opened once (by the app that you select at that time, which must then copy the file locally if it wants to keep it; no other app will be able to access that file unless you download it again).
* Another important need is to provide something that functions like the SD card for phones which don't have one. For an OS that doesn't require the presence of such a card, WP8 has a number of features which you can only use if you *do* have one. Example: using the standard MTP over USB access, if I want to add ebooks to my phone, I have to copy the ebooks to the SD card, then go into the e-reader app and tell it to load the books from the card. If I don't have a card, I'm screwed; there's no other way except to open them one at a time as email attachments or something similarly stupid. A universally accessible folder (even if it was read-only to third-party apps) for such content would make a lot of sense.
For those of you who say this feature would be useless, go and find a particular ringtone on your phone and share it with someone via Bluetooth, message, email or however you want heck use Skydrive and then come back and tell me if you can even navigate to the ringtones folder using Xbox Music.
---------- Post added at 06:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:40 PM ----------
sinister1 said:
For those of you who say this feature would be useless, go and find a particular ringtone on your phone and share it with someone via Bluetooth, message, email or however you want heck use Skydrive and then come back and tell me if you can even navigate to the ringtones folder using Xbox Music.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Any one
From what I read on WPCentral, this was a mistake being marked as complete, so false alarm regardless.
P.S. I am in the camp of wanting a file manager/explorer.
Sadly, true. You can see that on the uservoice site directly... :-/
They will probably give a full file manager with windows phone 9 or something.
That's right.
The forum admin says that the thread's were mistakenly marked as accomplished.
Way go MS.Nice idea for fixing problems. ;(
Sent from my Windows Phone 8S by HTC using Tapatalk
I take it that no response to my question above means it's not possible to do on WP, Okay how about downloading a pdf file from an email or SkyDrive? The reasons for a native file explorer on WP is so obvious. Not everyone carries a tablet or laptop computer with them at all times just to be able to explore, rename, save or copy files on their phone.

Question Searching for an Office app

I am in the process of building up apps on my new S8. I have spent all day installing and uninstalling Office-type apps trying to find one that will allow access to my NAS for saving and retrieval. Has anyone found an app of this type that allows local network storage?
Thanks
Not what you're asking, but if you don't find a better solution, you could consider saving locally to a specific folder on the device, and use the free SyncThing app and desktop client to automatically sync those things to the NAS through your computer. SyncThing is great.
I don't actually have experience with NAS because I'm using 2x 24-port SAS controllers in my desktop PC to access a huge amount of space that's treated as one, and of course through the Windows share, is available on the network, but I don't usually try to save something directly from an app to it, although I have used X-plore File Manager to copy or move files that already exist from one location to the other.
Good luck!
Interesting question. I've got several Windows shared drives on y local network, and I can open them from Solid Explorer, but they get copied to a temp file on my tablet, and you can't save them back to the drive. I tried using an Excel file with Google Docs and Microsoft Office / Excel.
I don't see a way to map the shared drives inside the applications. Cloud storage seems accessible, but not local shared drives.
Joe

Question unable to view micro-sd card with 3rd party apps?

Hello,
As usual with all my 'new' phones, I struggle with file explorer as I prefer to sideload my apps (I'm not Google's best friend) via desktop / usb / micro-sb / install. This seems to coincide with Google's view that micro-sd card is not Google's best friend either, and it seems (am I wrong?) that with each new OS variant, it's a steeper and steeper uphill struggle with Android v. external storage. I managed, in the end, to take it under control in Android 6, but under Android 12 in my new G50 I've failed miserably. Basically, every (about 5 - 6) file manager / browser apps I installed (from apks put directly in internal memory), fails to see the micro-sd. I formatted and then formatted again inside my phone (my desktop can see it, G50 can see it in settings (storage), Storage can 'see it, but those apps can't see what is actually inside. I have a vague idea it's about 'permissions', but I did check that those file manager apps have permission for 'file and media' and no other permissions have been denied, so I've hit the wall here.
Interestingly (perhaps 'obviously'), VLC player can browse (and play) sound files on the card, even though it's got exactly the same permissions. Presumably some photo browser would be able to access images on the card, so why is that such a struggle with file managers?
In fact, I wouldn't mind the built-in file browser ('Files'?), if it wasn't for the fact that it's an abomination to start it. I can see it in settings (as system app), but I can't create a shortcut to it (home screen), because it's not listed in the app drawer (presumably, as it's a system app). So, to get to any files on micro-sd, I need to go through a very convoluted route of:
Settings > Storage > choose storage > Files.
On top of which, it is a truly HORRIBLE file browser in terms of features and interface. Yes, there's the google files app, which also can access micro-sd card, but I generally disable all Google apps, unless I absolutely have to.
Is there anything else I can do about it, or is that 'it', i.e. this is baked in and no replacements will work? (short of google files and rooting, presumably, but I can't root G50, because I do need a couple of banking apps and one or two others, which won't work on rooted handset).
Regards,
N.
Welcome the the Gookill nightmare of scoped storage. Some more work arounds.
Google hates expandable storage as it conflicts with their lame cloud everything strategy. Like MS they want to ram cloud down our throats.
I run 2 Samsung N10+'s one on Pie the other Q so I don't have to deal with this bs.

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