I have recently purchased the Mac and Win bundle as my laptop is Mac and my desktop is Win. I’m storing my files in dropbox/apps/scrivener…
However the most recent versions of both applications don’t seem to be able to play well together.
Currently my Mac files won’t open in Win.
Any hints on how I should keep these in sync?
The most recent Mac Scrivener version, 3.0, uses a different project format from the current Windows release.
You can export a Scrivener 3 project in the older format using the File -> Export -> As Scrivener 2 project.
Or you can install Scrivener 2.9 for Mac, which uses the older project format. You can download it here:
literatureandlatte.com/legacy-download
Katherine
What functionality do I lose by downgrading my Mac App?
All of the new Scrivener 3 features and interface appearance, as described in the various L&L blog posts prior to S3 release.
That’s a little shoddy to be honest. Look, I get Windows and macOS are two different platforms, but they should still be updated at the same time so we don’t have to use workarounds to open files written on one platform from another.
You are free at any time to write a non-trivial application, make it cross-platform, and synchronize all the releases so that all features are present on all platforms at the same time.
If you have not attempted to do so, perhaps you should be thankful for the work put in by those who are attempting to do so instead of calling them shoddy.
Scrivener is a great product.
Devin, I am a software developer and manager for 25 years including years of building products and Microsoft and other great companies such as Adobe. I agree with you completely the word shoddy is not nice, but you should never say anything negative or sound negative regarding your customers. Negativity makes your company and your product look bad regardless of what the customer is saying. He is just voicing his frustration which is very valid. I just ran into the same problem and felt the same way.
I also know the solution which to slow down a bit in feature launches so you can deliver both at the same time. I realize this is very complex and hard to do, but many companies do it, even small ones. At the minimum, you should say very sorry for your inconveniences, and we fully understand and will try to remedy the situation as soon as we can. Anyway, keep up the great work. Software development is very hard, and you guys have built a better product than I ever have.
Lest Lit & Lat be dinged for the comments or tone of other users, I should point out that Devin is not an employee of the company, he’s just another customer like you or me.
Also, they DID delay the Mac os release, as I see it. The private Mac v3 beta didn’t get released to sell until the Windows v3 beta was rolled out to the public, so that those who were really insistent on running v3 on Mac and Windows had a path to do so. Plus, you can always pretend that they didn’t release v3 for Mac and just use the last update of version 2 with the same license code. It’s literally the exact same end-result for Mac/Win Scrivener users that you’re proposing.
Since you have the exact same option now that you would if the Mac v3 release hadn’t happened yet, what’s the argument is that Mac-only (or Mac/iOS only) user should have to wait on the pace of the Windows team’s release schedule?
As is clearly stated in my signature.
That’s no excuse for jumping to conclusions and not reading peoples signatures. You should know better. This is a USER forum. 
Would anyone arguing that we should have held the Mac release to wait for the Windows version care to comment on the decades long pattern of poor compatibility between the Mac and Windows versions of Microsoft Office? Or the egregious neglect by Apple of the Windows versions of products like iTunes and iCloud?
This ideal world that you are describing in which identical versions roll out across all platforms simultaneously simply doesn’t exist.
Katherine
Very sorry for jumping to conclusions. My opinion was only based on the fact I felt opinion of LL should have been a little more sympathetic. Now I see that is not LL’s response, I think it is great for a customer (Devin) to stand up for LL because you guys are doing great work. I am happy that Mac version is on V3 as it is great. It would be nice that PC was at the same time but not that big of a deal since I am primarily a Mac user, probably most Mac users prefer to be Mac users. Sorry again.
It does not need to be identical at the same time it only needs to be compatible at the same time and I can guarantee you thousands of small companies do this every release.
You’re missing the point, again!
Version 3 for Mac IS compatible and can read the older format, and can even export in the old format. How do you expect the Windows version 1 to be forward compatible and suddenly be able to read a format that didn’t exist when it was released?
Seriously, can you really list thousands of companies that make forward compatible software, that is able to handle whatever changes may appear in the future? Not even Microsoft can handle that. My old Word version that read and write .doc files can’t handle .docx files.
Trust me Lunk, I understand. You are referring to two versions on the same operating system. I agree with you that is not feasible. Most companies do make sure the latest version on 2 different platforms is compatible that have products that support back and collaboration or people working on the same files on multiple computers and Dropbox. Imagine if you were using Evernote and they said you can’t sync your files between your PC and your Mac you must export and import it? That’s a more extreme case. Any company that supports iCloud sync between Mac and IOS deals with this problem all the time, easily thousands.
As they pointed out, they had to make a choice go faster with the Mac version or keep compatibility. They chose option #1 and that might very well be the better choice. I like V3 a lot so it’s a reasonable choice from my perspective but for others, it might have not been so good.
“Thousands” of companies? I’m skeptical. I’m not sure you could even find 1000 companies using non-public formats across multiple platforms.
Evernote, for instance, uses HTML. An Evernote “note” is essentially a web page, and as such it can be accessed from any browser on the planet. That’s the big advantage that HTML gives you. But that’s not even remotely the same as the Scrivener project format.
Katherine
Think about it this way there are around 400,000 iPhone apps a significant number of those have related windows, Android, Web, and Mac apps that they sync to. Really it is thousands, but does it matter if it is 1,000 or 2,000 or even 500. My bank gives me some warning, if you want to use this app you must upgrade (obviously they are not small). The point is many small companies do it and I can only assume you will need to learn how as well eventually even adding a patch to the Windows 2.9 version to allow it to open and save 3.0 files.
Evernote only uses HTML is the same as saying Scrivener only uses RTF. I don’t want to downplay the work the Scrivener team is doing. You guys have a fantastic product but as products get bigger and more popular you start to go through these types of growing pains. To help, I see no reason the price of this product shouldn’t be higher 
but I also appreciate you have kept it where it is.
I think you might have gotten so caught up in the argument you’ve confused some of the details.
Scrivener for Windows 1.9 is the current released version of Scrivener for Windows. It generally writes out files compatible with Scrivener 2.x for Mac (the previous release).
Scrivener for Windows 2.9 is the current beta release of Scrivener for Windows 3.0, which, when released, will be intended to be compatible with Scriver 3.x for Mac. Because it is a beta release, not intended for production work, it only supports the 3.x format. It is NOT intended for every day use and being interoperable with the current released version, and by not including this code in the betas, L&L widely reduce the scope of potential bugs they have to deal with, some of which may have nothing to do with 3.x.
Scrivener for Mac 3.x is the current released version of Scrivener for Windows. When 3.0 was released, it included the “Save as 2.x” functionality. As I understand it, that functionality was included not to provide seamless integration between versions, but to keep the upgrade from being a one-way trapdoor and to allow people who use both Mac and Windows to continue to move files between platforms, albeit with loss of functionality when doing so.
We presume that when Scrivener for Windows 3.x is released, it will follow the same pattern as Scrivener 3.x for Mac in regards to this functionality – provided for convenience, to allow users to have a chance to work on projects in 3.x for a time and move back to 2.x if they need to. It will likely again involve some loss of functionality to step back.
Expecting ANY developer to provide forwards compatibility for non-trivial formats so that an older version can load documents created in a newer version with a different format is, well, a bit naïve. Presumably the new format was designed for a reason, and those reasons are tied to new features (or cleaned up codebases that are easier to test and debug). Putting the effort into allowing the old version to access the new format with full fidelity is giving the upgrade away for free – which, if that’s your business model, is great, but if it’s not no shame there either.
The only non-trivial example of providing forwards compatibility that I can remember was from Microsoft – the Office 2003 plugins for the Office 2007 XML-based formats. Even then, there were lots of issues with those plugins and they were meant as a temporary solution while an organization was upgrading to the new 2007 suite. There were pretty significant reasons to move to 2007 (the new formats were much more stable, not to mention significantly smaller on-disk in most cases). Even then, though, the plugins were a hack, not a solution. The solution was to upgrade.
At any rate, the biggest point of confusion I believe you have is that only L&L staff get to decide what they have to do. You and I and the rest of the customers can request but they are under no obligation to fulfill our requests. Which is good – customers frequently request contradictory things. KB has a vision for what Scrivener is and how it ought to work, and he is completely within his rights to say, “No, that request is not compatible with my vision.”
The new format is more robust against synchronization conflicts, making it more compatible with the “cloud” world we now live in. (And which did not exist when the Mac Scrivener 2 format was designed.)
Do not expect any patches to Win Scrivener 1.9, for format compatibility or otherwise. We simply do not have the resources for ongoing compatibility updates to old versions. Once Win Scrivener 3 is released, you should expect Win Scrivener 1.x to remain frozen in whatever state it happens to be at that point.
Katherine
Sounds good. This is the answer that should have been provided originally in this thread 