Joplin Cloud and Office attachments on Joplin Android App

Hi there,

First post here. Was trying to get help reading this forum and even other places ( reddit, etc. ) before posting, but without success to my questions.

I´m on a Windows 10 Pro x64 PC ( 19043.1706 ) running Joplin 2.7.15 (prod, win32), revision: 8352e23
On Android I´m on Android 11 smartphone and running Joplin Android 2.7.2.
I´m running official Excel apps on PC and Android.

Running trial of Joplin Cloud for sync of notes - and most important - and Excel attachments either on my PC and also on my Android smartphone.

When I upload and edit my attached Excel files on the PC, I can also see the updated PC data on the Android Joplin app. But on Android app If need to make same editing/updating on the excel file, although also connected trough the same Joplin Cloud, I´m always asked to "where to save the excel file".

It doesn't save the changes into Joplin Cloud, as I thought, or am I´m doing something wrong?

My interest on Joplin Cloud ( nor just Joplin ) is to keep some safer notes away from "classical clouds" (Onedrive, Google Drive, etc.).

I also read somethings about Syncthing and the regular Joplin app as a solution for a changing file attachment in several devices. But I don´t wanna host my own server or either use the "classical clouds".

Hope someone can help or point in some direction.

Thanks.

Hi there,
This is most likely not Joplin Cloud issue per se but the mobile application one. As it stands now, the mobile client cannot edit attachments, only preview them.

As a slightly hacky workaround you can use Attaché plugin (Mobile drawing update section) for updating attachments. Long story short, the plugin simply replaces attachments inside Joplin's notes for new attachments somewhere in the filesystem.

So, to update your excel file, you'd need just pass a new (edited) file to the plugin and it will replace the old unedited file inside Joplin for the new one.

Basic workflow how to make it happen:

  1. you setup an additional sync between "plugin folder" and an "android folder" (via FolderSync or Syncthing)
  2. You save the edited attachments in the android folder
  3. Next time you'll run desktop Joplin, the attachments will be updated in the notes automatically

mermaid

graph LR
subgraph Desktop Joplin
Destop-Note1 --> Old-file
end
subgraph Mobile Joplin
Mobile-Note1 --> New-file
end
New-file ---> Syncthing-folder-mobile
Syncthing-folder-mobile -->|Syncthing magic| Syncthing-folder-desktop -->|Attache replaces old file| Old-file

In the future if mobile plugins project succeeds, the 1 and 3 steps would be no longer needed but for now you can get yourself accustomed with the plugin workflow

Welcome to the forum, cheers!

4 Likes

Hi graphit0,

Many thanks for your help and swift reply.

Now I understand what's happening.

Regards.

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