Problems with iBank and Dropbox

Question

Kind of an odd question for you; I'm trying to fix something that a friend of mine did to her computer. She uses iBank, and recently has been using Dropbox. She tried to back up her iBank info to Dropbox, by dragging the iBank application from the dmg into the Dropbox folder. (She also had never pulled the application from the dmg to the Applications folder.) This obviously didn't work. (I have, in the course of this, figured out that should she need to do this in the future, it'd just be the data file and the preferences, apparently.) Now, we can't find the data file anywhere. I can find the preference file, but not the data.

She called me in after this happened, and so I can't say for certain exactly what happened or if anything was done, but I've been poking around and can't find the data files anywhere. Anyone have any ideas what might have happened, and if it's recoverable?

Thanks-

Answer 1

The data file is something that she would have needed to save the first time she ran iBank. It's akin to a Word file. The only thing is that iBank automatically opens that same file the next time. The easiest way to find out where it is located is to open iBank, and pull up the context menu from the icon near the file name in the title bar. It will tell you in reverse order where the file is located. Illustrations below:

Mine is located in an encrypted sparsebundle called Safedocs.

If it doesn't open automatically, check the File -> Open Recent menu. Incidentally, the iBank.app contains no user data. As you may have noticed, the preferences files are at ~/Library/Preferences/com.iggsoftware.iBank4*. If you can find the data file, that's all you need to backup to Dropbox.

On an unrelated and unsolicited note, I'm not sure how much I trust Dropbox with financial records.