You picked Dropbox a few years ago. Now you’re not so sure.
Maybe your Microsoft 365 plan came with a terabyte of OneDrive you’ve never touched. Maybe the whole household has moved to Google Drive and Dropbox is the last holdout. Or maybe Dropbox’s free space finally ran out, and paying for a second cloud provider when you already pay for one feels like the wrong way round.
Your record images live in one provider’s folder, your research database expects to find them there, and moving everything by hand sounds like the kind of afternoon that ends in broken links and regret.
So let’s not do it by hand. Switching cloud providers in Evidentia 3+ moves you to a new provider and keeps every attachment connected, start to finish, in one guided run.
Why moving the files by yourself isn’t enough
The part that trips people up when you’re switching cloud providers is this. When you attach a record image to a citation, Evidentia doesn’t only remember the file; it remembers where to look for it. And “where to look” is tied to the cloud provider you chose.
Think of it like a forwarding address. If you drag all your folders into OneDrive yourself, the files arrive safely at the new house, but your database is still mailing everything to the old one. The records keep asking for a building you’ve moved out of, and the attachments come back marked not found.
That second half — telling every record where you’ve moved to — is the part that’s tedious and error-prone to do on your own. It’s also the part Evidentia handles for you.
What we do together, in three steps
Switching cloud providers starts right where you’d look for it: Settings → Storage. We choose the new provider, sign in to it, and from there Evidentia handles the rest in one guided run. The three steps below happen in order, with no babysitting required.
First, we copy your folders over. Your Database, your Records, and your Backups are copied into the new provider’s folder, one at a time, with a progress bar at each step so you’re never staring at a still screen wondering whether anything’s happening.
Then we re-point your records. Once the files have landed, Evidentia goes through your research and updates every attachment to look in the new home instead of the old one. It does this for all your databases, not only the one you have open — so nothing gets left behind asking for the old address.
Last, we disconnect from the old service. When you’ve moved between two cloud providers, Evidentia releases its connection to the old one as part of finishing up — so you’re not left signed in to a service you’ve stopped using. To be clear about what that touches: it only lets go of Evidentia’s access. Your account at the old provider, and any files still sitting there, are untouched.
When it’s done, Evidentia restarts itself to finish settling in, and you’re back to your research with everything where it belongs.
Undo is built in, and your originals never move
This is the first question worth asking before switching cloud providers, so let me answer it plainly: the switch copies your folders. It doesn’t pick them up and carry them away. Everything in your old provider stays exactly where it is until you decide to clear it out.
So if something looks off, or you simply change your mind, your original library is sitting right where you left it, safe and complete. We can point Evidentia back at the old provider and carry on as if nothing happened. I built it this way on purpose. The storage decisions people dread are the ones they can’t take back, so I made sure this one you can.
If you keep your files online only
In Short
If you keep your record images online only and you’re switching between two cloud providers, Evidentia moves your database but leaves those files for you to sync across yourself.
When you’re switching cloud providers, I’d rather tell you this now than let you trip over it. It only applies in one specific case: if you keep your record images online only — living in the cloud, not also downloaded onto your computer — and you’re moving from one cloud provider straight to another.
In that one situation, Evidentia copies your database, but it leaves the record images for you to move yourself. Everywhere else — if your files are synced down to your computer, or you’re moving to or from local storage — it copies everything.
The reason is mechanical. When your images live only in the cloud, the move would mean pulling thousands of files down from one provider and pushing them up to another, over the internet, with nothing on your computer in between. That kind of transfer is slow and tends to stall partway, so Evidentia copies your database, leaves the record files for you to move the way that suits you, and then cleans up the links so every record reconnects. It tells you when this applies, so it’s never a surprise.
Restoring a backup from your old setup
This next one sounds scarier than it is. Say you switched to OneDrive last month, and now you need to restore a backup you made back when you were on Dropbox. That backup remembers your files the old way, pointing at Dropbox. You might expect it to land in your new OneDrive setup with every link broken.
It doesn’t. Evidentia checks the addresses for you.
When you restore or import a backup, Evidentia notices that its attachment paths were written for a different provider than the one you’re on now, and re-points them to your current setup as part of the restore. The forwarding address gets updated in the same breath the records come back home. There’s no separate step, and you don’t have to remember which provider you were using the day you made that backup.
This holds both ways you might bring a backup in — restoring a full Evidentia backup file, or importing one from the Database options. Either way, your records come back pointing at where your files actually live today.
Old backup, new provider, no broken links. Restore it and get back to the research.
For the hands-on researcher
Already moved your files yourself?
If you’ve already dragged your Evidentia folder over to the new provider and let it finish syncing, there’s no reason to copy it twice. Evidentia notices the folder is already there and skips straight to re-pointing your records. There’s even a “files are already in place — only update my records” path for exactly this: you confirm the move is done, and Evidentia takes care of the address change across all your databases. Handy if you like to move files your own way but still want the database side done right.
The short version
Switching cloud providers used to mean re-attaching files one citation at a time, or living with a library full of dead links. Not anymore. We pick the new provider, Evidentia copies your folders and reconnects every record, releases the old service, and you’re back to the work that actually matters. Your originals stay safe the whole way through.
If a storage change has been sitting on your to-do list because it felt too big to risk, this is where it stops being one.
New to Evidentia 3+, or weighing the upgrade?
Evidentia 3+ works with Dropbox, OneDrive, and Google Drive, and lets you move between them whenever your needs change.