I have been using Agenda as my work note taking app and I LOVE it. However, I am afraid of losing my notes if something happens to my computer. The only backup options available now are iCloud and DropBox. However, neither of those services are allowed on my work computer. I am probably not allowed to do time machine on a personal external drive either. My company uses Amazon WorkDocs and I imagine that other companies have standardized on services like Microsoft OneDrive. I have seen other apps allow you to designate where on the file system the data are stored. This would allow WorkDocs and OneDrive users to put their data file in a location that is synchronized with the service that they use. This seems like the most flexible solution.
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Unfortunately, the type of data that we have (database files) does not work well when put in a file sharing service. There is real risk of corruption, particularly if you change the data from two different devices.
Here is how to make a manual backup on macOS:
- Click on Finder, and choose Go > Go to Folder
- Enter
~/Library/Group Containers - Find
WRBK2Z2EG7.group.com.momenta.agenda.macos - Select it and choose Edit > Copy
- Go to your backup location, select the folder, and choose Edit > Paste
Perhaps you could use that somehow.
I understand. Is it safe to do this while Agenda is running? I am thinking that I will add a script that does this daily.
Copying the Agenda files while the app is running is possible, but there is a small risk that the backup will have some data corruption. The Agenda library should be OK; that should not corrupt. So this type of backup is probably safe enough.
To close the loop, would these be the correct steps to restore?
(1) quit Agenda
(2) move ~/Library/Group Containers/WRBK2Z2EG7.group.com.momenta.agenda.macos somewhere safe in case it contains any data of interest and the restore goes sideways
(3) copy the backup to ~/Library/Group Containers/WRBK2Z2EG7.group.com.momenta.agenda.macos
(4) start Agenda
Cheers,
Adam
Hi Adam,
Yes, that sounds right. Indeed, always move the old data aside so it is safe first.
Kind regards,
Drew
For the same reasons that sethgott mentioned I need a real backup option. Or even better a full export and import so that I can merge two agenda instances at the end. This shouldn’t be too complicated and ads a lot of value for many of us!
I’m afraid there is no such thing as just combining the files to merge things. The format is a complex database, not just the notes as text, so any attempt to merge will likely result in corruption.
A full export may make sense. What is your use case? If you do this on your own data, you will end up with duplicates of everything.
Hi Drew,
is it possible to make this file „more robust“ and foolproof in terms of data corruption or read-write errors? This would be a wonderful possibility to save this data to a NAS and let access all local Macs to this direction. Each device syncs the data and write changes back when the work is done. In fact this works already right now: After making changes, Agenda saves it in the cloud and keeps everything up to date. You only have to replace or add „Folder“ to „iCloud“ / „Dropbox“ in settings. 
That would „beat two birds with one stone“: You are safe to work with you data locally, without having to sync it in the cloud. You don’t have to worry about privacy policy if you are working with business-related data because everything is stored locally.
That’s the way 1password offer syncing: local sync against a file and wireless sync with iPhone against the mac app.
DEVONthink have the same approach: You can sync your Macs with a file on one computer
Edit: I wrote that note some weeks ago and found it by chance as a „work in progress“ Although it‘s a bit outdated, I wanted to share my thoughts on this topic.
Cheers, Holger
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Agenda does effectively manage a bunch of files in the cloud, but it is not something designed for people to mess with. It’s a complex database format that ensures that when you make changes on different devices, they merge properly, rather than losing one set of changes.
We have played with the idea of mirroring the data in a user editable form (eg text files in dropbox), but it has been put on the back burner for now. Bigger fish to fry I’m afraid.
Ok, thanks to let me know!
Is there any way to do the backups from iPad? Having something like OmniFocus’s Archive mode, but for backup would be really nice here.
Guess, it’s another good candidate for paid plan option - the more and more I stick with your app, the more and more data I have, the more I begin to worry not to loose it and keep incremental backup / little Time Machine.
Hm? =)
In terms of iPad, backing up to iCloud with Apple’s own system will include the Agenda data, so worth doing.
If you are paranoid about it, you could use a tool like iExplorer to get the Agenda data off the device as a backup.
We will consider if backups could be an option, but it would add a lot to the data on your device. Perhaps an archive export of all the data would be the best option, which you could then move somewhere else.
The case I’m frightened: something goes wrong - on your side or on iCloud side and the database get corrupted. Meaning all my notes (and I’ve got quite a lot of things to process in there already) will get lost.
Notion.so has an option to setup GitHub sync. I’m looking for something to enable versioning / backups running for me - as it’s all is very important to me, I would like to be sure that even if (when) something goes wrong one day (it always does one day, from my experience), I could recover.
And I believe it would be fair if you ask extra for that.
I’m not sure I understood how backuping up to iCloud with Apple’s own system works, but I definitely don’t want to plug a PC / Mac on a regular basis just to make sure my beautiful and portable notebook is safe - hope you will understand that 
I mean - it must not be on my device… could be an Automator (as Agenda is iOS / MacOS only) ready to use workflow, that will let to upload it on some personal S3, or… I don’t know - some other cloud storage…
What do you think?
It’s an interesting idea, but it is not something we can build in a short space of time, I’m afraid. Setting up that cloud infrastructure etc is a lot of work.
My advice would be to use the backup solutions Apple provides. It is good not only for Agenda, but other apps. Back up iPad - Apple Support
The iCloud one is the easiest. Just ensure you have an iCloud account that has enough space, and then turn on the backup option in Settings on the iPad. It will backup Agenda’s data. If you ever encounter an issue, restore the iPad to a recent backup. Gives some piece of mind.
We will consider if we can make a library export option. That would export a large zip file into the Files app. You could put that in Dropbox or into iCloud, and make manual backups that way. I guess possibly we could make a regular backup in the same way. Will think about it.
Thank you for your offer, but I don’t like the idea, not at all - iPad goes to de-wire-ization, and you offer quite the opposite; or what you offer won’t keep previous databases.
I’m not saying it has to be a separate cloud (and you will loose the key advantage of keeping my data with me only). I’m saying that I need some option to keep multiple previous versions of the data, or I can’t trust the app to keep everything I have to write down.
Manual backups also never works good - that’s how people loose data (because they never make backups manually).
I understand you have a different tech. skills and profile inside the team, which basically let you to create such a wonderful app in a first hand.
I’m more from an SRE/DevOps/System Engineering world and I used to think different here (seen a lot of the f…ups from both users and cloud providers, even as big as Apple).
You seems like missed the Automator part, don’t you? It could solve a lot of issues, give flexibility and extensibility, without making you to program and support it all?
Automator doesn’t exist on iOS at all. I guess you could mean Shortcuts.
The main point is that Apple provides system wide backup, so that each app doesn’t have to.
I could imagine we could offer export of all data as a zip file, and perhaps also allow that as a shortcut. (On Mac, it is much more straightforward to simply zip or copy the data with a script, because you have access to the file system.)
We will consider it. Thanks for the feedback!
Shortcuts it is indeed, thank you for the correction!
Apple doesn’t provide incremental backup for iCloud data, unfortunately. You can get it with Time Machine for Mac apps, but nothing I’m aware of for iOS & iCloud apps.
Shortcut button / step - export all notes (in any format) would put my mind in piece here and it feels like an easy thing to do as well - please, correct me if I’m wrong.
It would be possible to export all the data to Documents or something like that.
How do you mean iCloud does not do incremental backup? As far as I know, that is exactly what it does. It incrementally backs up your iPhone, at least once a day.
It doesn’t provide a history though, so maybe that is what you are getting at.
Anyway, we will consider it. I’ve put it on the list for when we can find a bit of time.
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Well, in case if Agenda database get corrupted or deleted, I wouldn’t like to loose all my day data and quite a few hours to get recovered from the night backup (if I will be quick enough to notice that in 1 day, and not in 1 week, for example, being on holiday).
Please, give me the way to export and manage the export on my own way, to keep my data save.
I mean - we are all human and things could happen, hate to have it with my database containing all my records and notes and everything else.