Share an Address Book via Dropbox

As an alternative to manually exporting and importing an address book you can get it updated automatically through a shared resource, such as a Dropbox or OneDrive folder. This tutorial will explain how to sync through a Dropbox folder — a similar procedure can be used to share through any other file sharing service or a network drive in a LAN.

Important!

To avoid possible conflicts, use this method if you are the only person who works with the software. For a multi-user environment it is recommended to use the sync server instead.

Throughout this page we assume that you have two PCs with Viewer installed ("Viewer A" and "Viewer B") and your Dropbox account is available on each Viewer PC.

Setting up "Viewer A"

In Viewer A go to Manage tab and click Address Book Manager.
In the Address Book Manager window click Add.
Select Local and click Next:
Select Create new address book file and click Finish:
Select your Dropbox folder and click Save.
Click on the Name column to rename your address book to something more descriptive. Click Close.
The new address book will appear in the Viewer A. Now you can populate it with records.

Setting up "Viewer B"

In Viewer B go to Manage tab and click Address Book Manager.
In the Address Book Manager window click Add.
Select Local and click Next:
Select Open existing address book file and click Finish:
Navigate to your Dropbox folder, select the address book file and click Open.
Click on the Name column to rename your address book to something more descriptive. Click Close.
The new address book will appear in the Viewer B.

Now the address book in Viewer A and address book in Viewer B both point to the same file stored in your Dropbox folder. You can add, update or delete records on either side. The changes in one Viewer will be reflected in the other Viewer as soon as Dropbox updates the address book file.

Important!

You can add Viewer 3, Viewer 4 etc. the same way you did with Viewer B. The Dropbox folder with the address book file must be available on all Viewer PCs.

Using Portable Viewer

You can also use the Portable Viewer as an alternative to the installable version. In this case you just need to create your address book in the Viewer, which in the case of the Portable Viewer is stored in its own directory with the other program files. Then copy your entire portable Viewer folder to Dropbox and run the Viewer executable (rutview.exe) from there on each workstation you work from.

Some users find this method to be even easier than installing Viewer on each workstation and loading a shared address book in the Address Book Manager.