What is a variable?


A variable is a value which may be different each time it is retrieved, or may be different depending upon the configuration of the computer or the profile. All variables are surrounded by percentage signs, e.g. %variablename%. There are several types of variables:

  • Environment Variables: These are variables that are part of the Windows operating system. For example, %ProgramFiles% usually has a value of C:\Program Files
  • SyncBack Variables: These are variables that are managed by SyncBack itself. For example, %DAYOFWEEK% returns the numeric value of the current day of the week, e.g. 1 if today is Monday. For a complete list of the SyncBack Variables refer to the help file. Note that SyncBackFree does not support all the variables.
  • User defined variables: You can also define your own custom variables in a profile (including groups) and also global variables (see Global Settings).
  • Auto-Incrementing Variable: The special profile variable %AUTOINC% can be used in cases where existing numeric variables do not meet your requirements. For example, you may want rotating backups for 4 days. No variable exists for that (e.g. %DAYOFWEEK% has 7 days), but using the %AUTOINC% variable you can achieve it.
  • Profile Variables: These are variables that refer to settings of the profile itself. They are always prefixed with an underscore, e.g. %_Source% returns the source directory for the profile.
  • Registry Variables: In SyncBackPro/SE you can also retrieve values from the registry, e.g. %@HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla\Mozilla Firefox\CurrentVersion%
  • Script Variables: SyncBackPro also supports the creation and manipulation of variables using scripting. See the help file for more details.
  • SyncBack Touch Variables: There are some variables that are expanded on the SyncBack Touch device itself, e.g. %SBT_VERSION%

Please refer to the help file for a complete list, and description, of all SyncBack variables. To view the help file, start SyncBack and press F1 to open the contextual help while it is running.