For most Apple product users it’s not enough to just have an iPod Touch or iPhone or MacBook Pro or iPad. Once you’ve gone Apple you never want to go back to using any other non-Apple products, be they Windows PC based computers, Android phones or the BlackBerry PlayBook.

In apple the go to sync program is iCloud and whenever you set up your new Apple product you’re given the option of creating an iCloud account that will help you sync your e-mail, contacts, calendars, reminders, Safari bookmarks, notes, documents and so much more between Apple devices. What that means is you can share each and every one of those applications without having to do anything other than signing into your iCloud account.

For example, if you recently added a new contact to your iPhone you can use iCloud to sync your new contact to other Apple devices so that all your iCloud enabled Apple devices will have the new contact automatically entered into them. Pretty simple and convenient, right? Yes, however, some users are wary of iCloud because documents synced through iCloud don’t always end up where you want.

While iCloud is the standard Apple syncing option there are other sync applications available that can do much more than just sync contacts and e-mail accounts; they can actually sync music and video files, as well as Microsoft Word documents. Plus they have the added bonus of not making you second-guess where your iCloud files have been synced!

[Read more – Battle for the Cloud: iCloud vs Dropbox]

One of the more popular syncing programs used by many Apple owners is Dropbox. Even though you can use both iCloud and Dropbox you can’t do anything other than sync your iCloud account and backup your iCloud documents to Dropbox when using the two in conjunction. For now it’s a one way street but one still worth traveling if all you want to do is back up your iCloud account and documents to your Dropbox account, which is useful because it never hurts to have plenty of backup copies of your most important documents and the option to retrieve older copies whenever you need them.

In order to sync your iCloud account to your Dropbox account you just have to follow the four steps we’ve listed below where we used Byword as our example:

  1. Enable iCloud. Turn your Mac on, go into System Preferences, click on your iCloud account and make sure the “Documents & Data” tab is set to ON.
  2. Create iCloud file. In Byword all you have to do is click on “File » Move to iCloud” in the menu. Most apps will have a similar option.
  3. Locate local iCloud folder. There will be a local folder solely dedicated to iCloud in Macs but it can be tricky to find; especially in OS X Lion updated Macs but it can still be done. How? The easiest way is to open the Finder, highlight ‘GO’ in the menu option, then hit your keyboard’s ‘Alt’ key. Do that and, voila, the Library folder will magically appear!
  4. Use Hazel to sync changes. The latest update to Hazel brought to it a sync option and one that will be irreplaceable to cloud-based storage users. Hazel’s new sync option will allow to you to see any specific folder and any changes to it by setting up a rule inside the Hazel app, which is what you need to sync iCloud to Dropbox.

We used Byword as our example above because of its straight forwardness to explain but the steps we stated above will most likely work on any Mac app that has the iCloud feature. Good luck syncing your iCloud account to your Dropbox account and may it provide you with all your cloud storage needs!