I'm writing a terrible novel and it would be a huge loss if it disappeared

October 26, 2009 11:31 AM

Help me come up with some sort of automated way of sending a file to myself in gmail.

Writing a novel. Paranoid about losing it. Currently backing it up to two different ipods and a thumb drive after each writing session, in addition to saving it on the laptop drive.

I'm also sending the file to myself in gmail after each session. However, this process gets annoying. Is there any way to create some sort of script or macro or something that I can click with one button to automatically open safari, navigate to my gmail account, fill in the fields, attach the file and and send it to myself?

If I'm asking for something ridiculous feel free to say so.
Using an iBook g4 with leopard installed.

posted by tylerfulltilt to computers & internet (17 comments total)

I am also paranoid about losing my manuscript, and I use Dropbox. I don't know of any script that does what you're looking for with Gmail, though.
posted by katillathehun at 11:34 AM on October 26, 2009 [2 favorites]

I don't know if it's ridiculous or not - maybe it can be done. However, I do think you're over thinking. Two ipods and a thumb drive represents a pretty redundant backup system. Just don't keep all three backups in the same place (put one or two in your car - the other by your bed) and the odds of you losing your book are infinitesimally small.

Once a week upload to gmail or some other online resource.
posted by crapples at 11:39 AM on October 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

Seconding dropbox with additional advice to go into Word settings and making your default folder for all documents to be something inside the dropbox and then you can give your paranoia some rest.

I guess google docs may be another option as it keeps several previous edits of your document which means that not even minute elements of your creativity can disappear.
posted by london302 at 11:40 AM on October 26, 2009

Have you tried Gspace?
posted by TheRaven at 11:42 AM on October 26, 2009

Do you have Filemaker or Access? You can program this in either of those. You would set up Outlook (PC) or Mail (Mac) so that it sent from/to your gmail account, then just program a button in Filemaker/Access to grab the file, which you would always save to the same place with the same name, and send it to a specified address as an attachment.

You could even program it just to send automatically every hour whether you're writing or not.
posted by crapples at 11:42 AM on October 26, 2009

This guide looks like it would work. A program like mozy would be a much easier solution though.
posted by susanvance at 11:45 AM on October 26, 2009

you can simply... send files to yourself from Gmail. Any attachment sent from Gmail stays available.

Jungle Disk is another "save it in the cloud" storage solution.
posted by Baud at 11:53 AM on October 26, 2009

Baud, the third paragraph of the question states:

I'm also sending the file to myself in gmail after each session. However, this process gets annoying. Is there any way to create some sort of script or macro or something that I can click with one button to automatically open safari, navigate to my gmail account, fill in the fields, attach the file and and send it to myself?

Emphasis mine.
posted by muddgirl at 12:05 PM on October 26, 2009

My backup situation looks like this:
I save everything to an organized structure inside My Documents.

A free program called "Allway Sync" grabs the necessary folders from my documents and mirrors them into the "My Dropbox" folder, which lives in C:/

I did that because, depending on where you open the file from, dropbox restored a couple older versions of a file I had, and because I like them living in two places here.

Allway also grabs files from this work computer to our work file server, but...whatever.

I would use the iMacros extension for Firefox to automate the emailing process, assuming that your email is always the same, file location is always the same, etc. 'Twould take about 20 seconds to record it and, because it only loads the parts of the page it needs to do the macro, probably 5 or so to run it...or as fast as your internet connection can do it.

Bonus for dropbox is that it can do file versioning.
posted by TomMelee at 12:14 PM on October 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

Once you set up Apple Mail to connect to gmail with SMTP/IMAP you should be able to do this rather easily.
posted by zsazsa at 12:15 PM on October 26, 2009

You don't even have to send them to yourself. Just make an email and attach the file, and click save. Instead of the backups filling up your inbox, they go to your drafts.
posted by justalisteningman at 12:26 PM on October 26, 2009

Instead of emailing it to yourself, you can use your Gmail account as an external hard drive:

gDisk

It's essentially the same thing as emailing it to yourself.

I typically do something different: open Gmail, compose an email, subject "Novel Draft," and attach the document you want to save. But, instead of emailing it to yourself, just do a "Save Draft," which will keep the "Novel Draft" email and the attachment safely in your Drafts box in Gmail.

When you want to save the new copy of your novel, just open up that exact same "Novel Draft" email in your Drafts box, and attach the new updated copy of your novel (delete the old one if you like), then do the same "Save Draft" again. No need to compose new emails.
posted by jabberjaw at 12:29 PM on October 26, 2009

Good topic. We too often undervalue data because it's not physical.

You're using Gmail as a snapshotting backup system, which is great: If you break the document in some way and then save the broken document to the disks, then you're just as screwed as if you have no backups at all.

You know, you can do this with all your data. You probably should.

Tell us what environment you're using, and we can probably suggest some. I use Linux, and I use 'duplicity' to backup to Amazon's S3 cloud. It costs me about $15 per month for bandwidth and storage, and I get daily snapshots (I can go back to any of the last 7 days or a month ago) of my data in case my house burns down.
posted by cmiller at 12:31 PM on October 26, 2009

you could also write your novel in google docs and then just save/export it to your thumb drive whenever you'd normally save it... accomplishes off-site backup and local backup without having to think about it.
posted by noloveforned at 12:40 PM on October 26, 2009

You really, really want to figure out a way to back up multiple versions of your document, as cmiller has said. In other words, don't overwrite the previous backup with your new backup.
posted by kenliu at 4:24 PM on October 26, 2009

Get Quicksilver, the best Mac OS X program in existence. Install the Mail plugin. Create an action in Quicksilver that takes 0.1 seconds to execute and sends your manuscript in 0.5 seconds to your GMail.
posted by krilli at 6:07 PM on October 26, 2009

... may I also suggest you get a copy of OS X 10.5 (Tiger) and start using Time Machine?
posted by krilli at 12:53 AM on October 27, 2009