Sync MultiCharts Database + Studies Across Computers

I use my desktop and a laptop for MultiCharts. I usually use the laptop in offline mode for strategy development. Naturally it’s become annoying to pick up my progress from one computer on another. Wouldn’t it be great to sync MultiCharts database and studies across your machines?

I have a working solution using Dropbox and junction links. Please be warned: you risk your database and studies attempting this. Back them up! I had a little scare but it worked out okay.

General procedure:

  1. Have Dropbox
  2. Shutdown MultiCharts, QuoteManager, PowerLanguage Editor, etc.
  3. Go to C:\ProgramData\TS Support\Your MultiCharts Version\
  4. Back up “Databases” and “StudyServer”
  5. Rename Databases to Databases_x
  6. Rename StudyServer to StudyServer_x
  7. Create a folder in Dropbox for this purpose – I made one called “MultiCharts Sync”
  8. Create a folder called “Databases” and another called “StudyServer” in that Dropbox folder
  9. copy the files from Databases_x to your new Databases Dropbox folder
  10. copy the files from StudyServer_x to your new StudyServer Dropbox folder
  11. Open an elevated command prompt (“run as administrator”)
  12. Run these commands, substituting your actual paths to your multicharts version and dropbox directory:

mklink /d "C:\ProgramData\TS Support\Your MultiCharts Version\Databases" "C:\Where\Dropbox\Is\Multicharts Sync\Databases"

mklink /d "C:\ProgramData\TS Support\Your MultiCharts Version\StudyServer" "C:\Where\Dropbox\Is\Multicharts Sync\StudyServer"

Last, important step: Run MultiCharts as an Administrator on the “master” computer that has these files. Do the same on other computers when Dropbox is done syncing. Otherwise you’ll get weird errors on your first run and things won’t work right.

Dropbox is pretty smart about updating the database files. Despite giving very long estimated upload times after adding new data, it actually finishes the sync quickly because it only transfers the difference.

I had good success using this procedure to sync MultiCharts database and studies, but be sure to pause Dropbox while you are using MultiCharts. I had some issues with conflict files and error messages from the program otherwise.

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