Today, while working on my current story, the screen went wonky. It began backspacing, and every time I tried to return to move the line to the beginning of a new paragraph, it would put it back to the previous paragraph. Then, out of the blue, the entire section blanked out, like there were no words. I’m assuming it turned them white because it still showed a word count. How do I stop this? It won’t let me highlight or copy what I’ve written or access the buttons/tabs to change the text color. Twice, I exited the program and returned to find all 14 chapters are now doing the same thing. I’m having a bit of a meltdown because I’m on a deadline. Please tell me how to fix this.
We currently have an ongoing investigation involving the use of a particular font causing symptoms like this. The text is of course there, as you note, but rendered invisible. Switching to a different font solves the problem, if that is something you can do, or maybe looking to see if there is a newer version of it.
As far as we can tell something changed with font handling in macOS 14, perhaps dropping support for some techniques used in old fonts, so if you recently upgraded the OS, it would be good to know that.
I was using IOS 14 prior to its latest update. I was holding off updating my laptop with the IOS update because when I uploaded it to my desktop last week, my computer began experiencing an unusually long lag with startup. I didn’t want the same thing to happened on the MacBook Pro while I was on my deadline. My Scrivener program is current on both computers, though. I was able to open the file on my desktop Mac, updated with all programs, and use it without issue. I have since updated the IOS system on the MacBook and, knock wood, it seems to be working okay now.
As far as fonts, I only use Times New Roman, but something interesting happened prior to the update and moments before the program went wonky. I duplicated the prior chapter, I do this for setting purposes, and when I deleted the words, it defaulted to a font I’d never seen before. I can’t remember the name off the top of my head, but if I saw it again, I could probably recognize it. It was bizarre in that it had never happened before.
I hope all that helps. Please let me know what you find.
Okay, well hopefully the situation remains stable after the update. If you do see it happen again, like I say, just trying changing the font to see if that causes it to go away, particularly after a restart. If so, there might be something wrong with that font itself, or the system’s cache of it (which is exactly the kind of thing that can get unstable when upgrading the OS).
I’ve been getting the invisible text thin although only for new text, existing remains black. I’m using Times New Roman.
I find closing and reopening Scrivener resolves it. Bit of a pain but only takes a few seconds.
Hmm, I’m not sure if that’s quite the same thing, though if it is it means the problem is broader on the whole than some people see it. For instance the report we have specifically got worse after reloading the project, to the point of impacting large amounts of previous work and not just new text. So everything there is kind of the opposite of what you’re seeing.
At any rate, let me know if the troubleshooting/workaround above has a result.
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