Originally Posted by
saecurtis
Scott - Your files are on your hard drive under the "My Documents/Dropbox" folder. They take up physical space on your hard drive and actually reside on your local drive. If you disconnect from the internet and open a file under your My Documents/Dropbox, it will open and you can edit and save it.
As soon as you connect to the internet, the file will update on the Dropbox cloud server and update the file on all the hard drives of the devices you are syncing under your Dropbox account.
Just like you have done, I have my entire working directory located in the Dropbox folder. I don't work from another folder and drag copies to the Dropbox folder for backup.
On the occasions where I meet a client at their house, generally, I don't connect to their network...so I have no internet access.
I open their plan from within my Dropbox directory, I make their desired changes, save and close the plan and put my laptop in the bag.
I drive to the office, take the laptop out and turn it on. At this point, my laptop automatically connects to my network and automatically syncs my Dropbox files.
Now, when I go to my desktop computer and access the plan file, it is updated.
If I hadn't connected my laptop to my office network first, I wouldn't have access to the most recent version from my desktop computer.