Can’t open two old projects

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
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I’ve been sorting out stuff on a new Mac mini M4 that replaced an older model.

I came across some old Scriv projects on an external drive that needed permissions fixed before they would open. I fixed the majority with the help of this useful support doc …

Two of these old projects, however, did not want to co-operate, even though I’d gone through the same processes in the support doc that worked for all the others.

The errant projects each provided the same two error messages.

<< Update Project? The project “XXXX.scriv" uses an older file format and cannot be opened. Would you like to update it? A copy of the old project will be saved in the same directory. >>

Upon clicking Update Project, this: << The document “XXXX.scriv" could not be opened. The update has been cancelled because there was an error when trying to create a backup of the project. Please check that there is sufficient space on your hard drive. >>

Certainly plenty of space, so that’s not the problem.

Interestingly, when I got to the point in the support doc’s instructions where it noted that “the icon of the file changes so that it now looks like a regular folder”, I took a peek inside and I could see that all the necessary stuff was alive and well within the folder.

Why don’t I just go to the backups of the two projects concerned? Well, unusually for me, I don’t have any. Not sure why. As I mentioned: old (both me and the projects).

Any suggestions for how to get these projects opening again? Yes, old, and rarely looked at, for sure—just the sort of projects that you suddenly find you need to look at… one day!

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What did those two projects look like on the inside of the package? Were they full of RTFD files for example? I’m wondering if in fact they are so old that they are no longer recognised by v3. If that is the case, it might be best to find someone with an older Mac that can still run v2 (pre-macOS 10.15), and use it to upgrade them to v2 format, and then on to v3.

Otherwise, a general-purpose solution for recovering projects that won’t open for some reason is to create a blank project, and then use the File ▸ Import ▸ Scrivener Project... menu command. It’s not as good as upgrading properly, but it should do a better job than raw RTF file imports or something along those lines.

Also, if none of the above works, feel free to send us copies of these projects to tech support. We could take a look and try to get the fixed/updated.

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Thanks AmberV. Yes, lots of rtf docs.

No relatively easy way for me to get to a v2, so I’ll give the blank-project-and-import scheme a whirl. If that works, I think it will be sufficient for my purposes, but I’ll report back.

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Oh! That was quick and painless. I tried importing one of the old projects to a new blank project and it worked perfectly. Thank you! As always.

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