I’ve come back to a project after a few months away, and when I close the project it says: ‘Project backup failed. Scrivener is set to back up on project close but the backup could not be created. This could be because the backup location is inaccessible or there is insufficient space. Automatic backup preferences can be adjusted in Options or Project Settings. Continue closing without backing up?’
I haven’t ever changed the location of my backup files.
I also may get this: ‘Cannot create temporary copy for backup. Temporary copy destination: "C:\Users\etc… 006.Scriv’ which causes Scrivener to freeze, so I have to End Task in Task Manager in order to quit.
And I have also had ‘The following errors occurred while saving your project. Could not save Binder. Error: Could not open Binder file. Location ‘C:\Users\etc… 006.scriv’ To avoid losing your latest changes, make sure you have enough space and write access on your storage device. You can create a copy of your project into another location using the menu File > Save As. You might also try to compile and save to RTF or DOC format to avoid losing your latest changes.’
I don’t get these all at the same time, but have had them all in the last few days.
I’ve tried to Save As to make a new copy in the same folder and in a different folder, including the desktop away from the OneDrive folder. In either case it says ‘Could not save project: Please select another location.’
Thankfully, the automatic save feature (after 2 seconds of inactivity) still works, so I’m not losing any work. I’m compiling as Word docs and saving those separately as a backup.
I’m saving straight to the hard drive with plenty of space. This syncs with my OneDrive in the background. I’m using Sophos Endpoint Agent antivirus, but there is no option to whitelist programs, and Scrivener doesn’t appear as an ‘Event’ anyway.
You could manually backup your project as an extra on top of your word format compile.
It is quite simple: just zip the project folder and add the date to its actual name. (Which is exactly what a backup from within Scrivener does, by the way.)
Else, I’d make sure Scrivener is ran with administrator rights.
I’d also whitelist Scrivener in my antivirus. (What you get are not the usual error messages, but who knows…)
In project settings. Project Settings / Backup. First option.
Is OneDrive storing the files placed on it remote only and making them available on-demand? That sort of thinig can be the source of trouble.
I would turn on the zip option in Scriv for backups, if you haven’t already.
Have you tried selecting another location for your backups to see if it makes a difference (and preferably for this test to a place onedrive is not combing thru)?
Is your live Scrivener project being stored in a location that is itself being synced by OneDrive?
Supplementary to @gr’s sage advice … as mentioned here often, best to target your automatic Scrivener backups (See Preferences Menu) to a location other than a folder that is synced to the “cloud”. If anything should go wrong on either the server or your local disk with the backup files, that flaw is immediately synced to all locations holding that file. Poof. Backup gone.
Thanks, I’ve tried to manually zip the project folder as a backup (using Windows built in Send to > compressed (zipped) folder), but an error window appears: ‘Compressed (zipped) Folders Error. File not found or no read permissions.’
I am able to compress previous saved versions of the same project, however.
I’ve tried running with admin rights with no change, and the antivirus doesn’t give any options to whitelist.
Sounds like Microsoft OneDrive has kept this file off your local drive “online” and your zip program can’t find what does not exist. Please see @gr’s advice.
The project saves to the C drive, then syncs to the OneDrive in its own time.
Zip option is on.
3, I’ve tried to change the backup location, e.g. the desktop and an external hard drive, it comes with the error ‘Cannot create temporary copy for backup’. (If I ask it to backup elsewhere and deselect the ‘zipped’ option, it says ‘Could not create project’).
The live project is syncing to the OneDrive. I’d prefer to move it now, but I can’t Save As.
I’ve turned off OneDrive to prevent it syncing, and have been able to move the project folder to a location on the C drive outside the OneDrive (Documents folder). I still can’t make a compressed copy of it (‘File not found’), it still won’t backup (‘Cannot create temporary folder for backup’), and I can’t Save As to make a new copy (‘Could not save project: Scrivener does not allow saving to a project’s .scriv folder. Please select another location.’)
To be honest, setting up an automatic backup is easier than working through your “save as” problem (as you are describing it). To me, getting a good backup soonest should be the highest priority, and getting that zip back-up is a “compressed copy of the project folder”.
My strong hunch is that the problem you see is caused by Microsoft OneDrive.
After moving the project out of the OneDrive folder (it wouldn’t let me copy), on rebooting the PC OneDrive asked if I’d like to restore it to the OneDrive. I allowed it (assuming my new copy would remain). I now could not open the new copy, but could open the restored version on the OneDrive, and it allowed me to backup, and it allowed me to Save As.
So I now have my working copy outside the OneDrive, and it is creating automatic backups on closing the program (again, outside the OneDrive).
Thanks for everyone’s help, I’ll be keeping clear of OneDrive from now on!
One more unsolicited piece of advice. Now that you have a “save as…” copy, remember that it is a copy and NOT your source Scrivener Project–unless of course the copy is now the source Scrivener Project. With “save as” sometimes people get confused and then have version problems when opening and working on both of them when changes made to one do not, of course, show up in the other. I’m not saying you’ll have that problem, but just watch (and for the benefit of other readers of this thread).
Same thing for me but couldn’t get it to work. I reset backups to dropbox and all is well, so it def seems it was on the onedrive side, at least for me.
Were (are) you saving backups as zip files? Hopefully yes as you are using a sync. IMHO I do not think synced files are reliable backups. flaws or data loss get instantly replicated. your choice.
As you can see, I can neither create backups nor save the actual scrivener file to my documents folder. I’ve attempted to reset the options to default and that has no effect. It seems to be trying to create a new temporary folder to zip the file but then somehow can’t write to that folder and fails.
I’ve tried running Scrivener as administrator, and that makes no difference with respect to the errors I’m receiving.
This is new, as I used to be able to both save and backup without a problem on this machine. Any help would be very much appreciated.
You project seems to be residing in a system Temp folder.
Do this:
Using Windows 11’s File Explorer, create 2 folders in Documents: Scrivener and Scrivener Backups.
In Scrivener, select File > Save As and save you project to Document\Scrivener.
In Scrivener, select File > Back Up > Back Up To… then click the Browse button and manoeuvre your way to Document\Scrivener Backups.
Everything will be stored to your computer—for now, but Projects will be away from backups.
If there’s a flaw in your WIP, it will be replicated to the backup, whether zipped or not.
An erroneous sync, according to my understanding, will occur per sync—what I’m getting at is that one faulty sync does not mean future syncs will be faulty.
The SCRIV folder is already a package (not in the Mac sense) of your project with underlying folder and files. Whether sync sees a BAK as a single entity, or deals with the contents, I don’t know for certain.
To an extent, a ZIP reduces the size of the content by a certain percentage.
I agree that if you have a faulty backup and store it elsewhere, you’re replicating the fault.
Whether you have a faulty Backup, is not typically obvious until you’re looking for something specific and you hit a snag.
