Running multiple rules on folders

Hello all!

First off, Hazel has saved my life. I use it constantly and love it. Okay, just had to get that off my chest.

My goal is to backup a project I'm working on in a few different ways. At 11 p.m. each night I want Hazel to do the following to two folders that are on a drive called Project.

- Copy "Recall" folder to my backup drive, and rename it with a specific convention that I have so I can have a running archive of what that folder looked like each date. This rule is running successfully.

- Also, copy "Furious" folder to that same backup drive and rename it. This is a separate rule that I have set up, and it does not run. Even the log has no record. I'm thinking that this is because I have both rules set to run at 11 p.m. and by the time the first one is done, 11 p.m. has passed. Does this make sense? If that's true, aside from spacing out the backups, how do I ensure that Hazel copies two folders at a certain time but renames them with separate naming conventions?

- Also, copy only modified files in "Recall" folder since the last copy to my Dropbox. I'm not sure how to set this rule up. Is this possible?

Check out the troubleshooting guide stickied at the top of this forum. In particular, make heavy use of the preview function. As for your last point, it should be possible but depends heavily on the details. Are these files all directly within the "Recall" folder or in subfolders as well? How do you want to handle files that are deleted? Is copying the whole folder an option and if not, why not?

Thanks so much for the reply.

I did look at the troubleshooting guide, and I looked at the log. The log showed simply no record of my rule being run, which is why I was thinking that it didn't run because by the time the first folder copied, the 11 p.m. time has passed and it didn't meet the condition. Does that seem to make sense in your opinion?

Basically, it would be nice to have Hazel scan my folder at X time each day, recognize all the files that have changed (yes many in subfolders) and copy only those changed files to reduce copy time as the folder is upwards of 15 GB.

Hazel actually uses a 5 minute window around the time so as long as things happen within that time, it shouldn't be an issue. Again, I suggest using the preview. Pause your rules and remove the time component of the rule. Make sure all the other conditions match as I suspect that it's one of them, or other rules, that are the cause of the problem.

Do you require file deletions to be recorded as well? If so, then you would want to use the sync action on the folder itself (not the individual files). See this thread: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1593#p6500

Otherwise, you can setup a rule to go into subfolders (see sticky thread on that) and another to copy each file individually, preserving the folder structure (which you can do via the Copy action's options).