Where Your Data is Saved

This help article explains where Direct Mail saves your project data and your custom templates (if have any).

Projects

A project contains all of your messages, mailing lists, campaign reports, autoresponders, and design tests. Most people will have just one project, but it is possible to create more than one (e.g. if you are managing email marketing for multiple clients). When you first launched Direct Mail, a new project was created for you. Projects can be saved either in the cloud or on your Mac. The default is to save projects in the cloud, but this can be changed in the Settings window.

Projects Saved in the Cloud

Projects that are saved in our cloud can be accessed from any Mac. All you need to do is download Direct Mail and sign in to your account. To open a project that is saved in the cloud:

The first time you open a project from the cloud, it may take some time to download to your Mac. Once the initial download is finished, though, future changes should sync quickly.

Projects Saved On Your Mac

Projects can be moved out of our cloud and on to your Mac's hard drive. Projects are just files, so you can save them in any folder that you like.

Moving a Project To or From the Cloud

You can move your project file out of the cloud and on to your Mac, or off of your Mac and into the cloud. Here's how:

If you are moving a project into the cloud, it may take some time for Direct Mail to finish uploading your data. You can check the progress by navigating to the Sync Status tab.

Finding Lost Projects

By default, each time you launch the Direct Mail app, it opens your last-used project. You can change this default in the Settings window. If Direct Mail is not able to find your last-used project, it instead opens the "Welcome to Direct Mail" window. You can open this window manually by choosing Window > Welcome to Direct Mail from the menu bar at the top of your screen.

The Welcome window lists all of your recently used projects, projects that you have access to in the cloud, and projects that are saved locally on your Mac's hard drive. If you don't see your project in the list, choose Help > Search for Projects from the menu bar at the top of your screen. A window will open in the Finder that searches your entire hard drive for Direct Mail projects (external drives and network drives are not searched).

Caution Against Dropbox and Network Drives

We recommend that users not save their project files in Dropbox or on a network drive. The reason is that doing so increases the risk that your project file will be corrupted and data loss may occur. This is because Dropbox and network volumes are not able to reliably work with the database file format (SQLite) that Direct Mail uses under the hood.

Instead of Dropbox or a network drive, use our cloud service to reliably sync your data between devices. Our cloud service is much faster, more flexible, and more reliable than third-party solutions.

Templates

Direct Mail comes preloaded with many templates. If you make custom templates, those templates can be saved in our cloud or saved locally on your Mac's hard drive. The default is to save them in the cloud so you can use them from all your devices. This default can be changed in the Settings window.

Moving a Template To or From the Cloud

You can move your template into or out of the cloud. Here's how:

Exporting or Sharing a Template

You can export or share a template file with other user:

Built-in templates cannot be shared or exported, but your custom templates can be.