This same issue occurred with an update a few months ago. After this current 2997 update, all the quotation marks and apostrophes have become a square character. Anyone else with this issue? How to resolve?
This should be in the beta forum. https://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=57 If you want the devs to see it, PM a moderator and request them to move it.
Are you seeing this in the Editor or the Compiler?
My guess is this may be related to the font. I’m not seeing it in the editor with Courier Prime. What font(s) are you using? As a test, you might want to try another, just to see if it makes a difference.
Best,
Jim
Moved to beta forum. – Katherine
Hello and thanks Jim and Katherine. The irony here is that when I had this issue last September, I also posted it in the Technical Support forum instead of this Beta Testing forum. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it, or so the phrase goes. Sorry about that.
Anyway, my situation is an interesting web of user confusion. Last September most of the punctuation was replaced with a black, bold question mark. There was no reply to my post back then and since my backups weren’t a solution, I had to manually go through the manuscript and replace all the punctuation which had been altered by the update. I pulled the missing footnotes from a hard copy I had.
Now on to this one. Funny that instead of black, bold question marks, punctuation was replaced by what appears as check-mark boxes. Both then and now the issue was in the editor. I didn’t try compiling.
The font I use is Sitka Text. After I posted yesterday, I did the following, which fixed the problem:
- Uninstalled Scrivener and made sure all files in the OS were gone and registry was cleaned (Windows 10 64-bit latest update)
- Re-installed Scrivener v2997
All is good again. One thing I learned during the uninstall is that the Uninstall function in the Windows control panel showed the most recent five versions of Scrivener I’ve used, apparently because I install updates without uninstalling the version running at the time on my PC. Today’s installation is a clean one. From now on I will uninstall Scrivener and clean up all its remnants before installing the latest update.
Thanks for your response and help. I hope I’m good to go now.
I just compiled the manuscript, which looks fine in the editor, and it is close but no cigar. I used Scriver Format manuscript (Courier), Compile for PDF, and got gobbledy-gook in some of the list characters (but not all) and the headers are total garble.
I’m beginning to think it is all me, total user error. Maybe I’m an alien from the Orion constellation and my personal magnetic field is causing these problems. Humor aside, it is frustrating. I’ll keep playing with this. Have no choice.
Lists’ve been a pain since day 1 of the beta. But I usually see something similar to what I entered and not gobbledygook.
Make sure your Scrivener beta is installed in a separate folder from ver 1.9.x. Co-installing in the same folder can cause the exact issue you’ve described. Other things can, too, unfortunately. If your Scrivener versions are overlaying in the same folder, correct that first.
Another possibility: corrupt installation. Delete the install (Uninstall, delete the directories it used). Download new, and reinstall.
Last possibility that occurs to me at this time:
Is this an old project file? If it’s an old file, I have to suggest you make a new one. Something in the files themselves causes issues. It’ll look fine in the editor, but Scriv can behave a little oddly. Had one where Scriv opened a file from beta versions a few ago, and it started behaving like that Beta did. Very strange. So this is within the realm of possibility.
This may fix the problem, or it may not.
This procedure forces Scrivener to create a new .scrivx file, new data folders, et cetera. By doing this, we force it to re-index the projects data folders and other stuff. (And, no, “Save and Rebuild Search Indexes” will not help in a case like this. You can try it, of course, but I doubt it will do anything to fix the issue).
You may lose custom metadata in the transfer, unfortunately, which means you might have to re-enter it. If you do, try recreating the names for the data first; often, the data itself can still be there, but the main index is lost (which is exactly what happens, and there’s no in-app way to copy the metadata from one project to the other. There’s a way outside of Scrivener to do this, but it’s not recommended [even if you know what you’re doing, you can screw up your project with a single misclick]).
Thank you all, especially @rwfranz for taking the time to provide detailed help. The issue is no longer an issue for me since I totally cleaned my PC of everything Scrivener, including the stuff the uninstall process left behind. Then I did a clean install of 2.9.9.8 and all is well. As I think I mentioned before, I will henceforth not install a new version without first completely cleaning my PC of the currently-installed version. Thanks again.
Hi rkeesecker,
For every new beta release, I’ve been doing an uninstall and a reinstall, and it’s worked out well.
In case you’re not already doing so, be sure to save your preferences prior to the uninstall and BEFORE the beta expiration date.
To save your preferences: File > Options > Manage > Save Options to File. (It’s a good idea to do this after any significant change to your preferences.)
After reinstalling, reload your preferences: File > Options > Manage > Load Options from File
Then everything should be set back to the way you had it.
Best,
Jim