Can't access backup from Dropbox on second computer

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

I am using the trial version of Scrivener with Windows 7 and find that while I can access backups in Dropbox on my desktop I can’t from my notebook. In more detail this is what happens:-

Desktop: latest backup of project in compressed zip folder in Dropbox. Clicking on it it contains a file with the name of the project.scriv. Clicking on it contains three folders: Files, Settings, Snapshots and a file ‘project’ of type ‘Scrivener Project’. Clicking on this brings up a box headed ‘Open Project’ with the text ‘The file is not a Scrivener project file. Please select a valid Scrivener project file.’, and giving an ‘OK’ option. Clicking on OK brings up a box headed ‘Scrivener Trial Version’ containing the options, ‘Buy Online’, ‘Enter Licence’ and ‘Try’. Clicking on ‘Try’ clears the box and discloses the whole Scrivener ‘New Project’ box with the headings on the left Getting Started, Blank, Fiction, Non Fiction etc. In the ‘Open Recent’ box at the bottom I can reveal the title of my project and clicking on this brings it up for editing.

I exit this, shut down the desktop and open my notebook and go into the dropbox folder where there is the just exited Scrivener project again named, as a zip file. (I note that right clicking this does not give an option for extracting as it does on the desktop). Clicking on this brings up a box headed ‘Open Project’ and containing the text ‘The file is not a Scrivener project file. Please, select a valid Scrivener project file.’ and giving an option ‘OK’. I click OK and this brings up, as on the desktop first the ‘Scrivener Trial Version’ box and then the Scrivener ‘New Project’ box. Here my project doesn’t appear in the ‘Open Recent’ option as it does on the desktop. If I click on the ‘Open Existing Project’ box I get the Dropbox folder in Windows Explorer headed with Scrivener logo and ‘Open Project’ but there are none of the backed up Scrivener files in it but can bring them up if I change the ‘Scrivener Project (.scrivx.scriv)’ as a file type to All Files (*). I select the latest backup and try to open it as a 'Scrivener Project (etc.) file. I then get a box headed ‘Open Project’ containing the text ‘Project name.bak2012-07-13T09-42 File not found. Check the file name and try again’. But this is in fact the name of the backup zip file in dropbox. (And right clicking this file gives no option to extract as it does on the desktop).

Can anybody please advise me how I can access my embryonic Scrivener project from Dropbox on my notebook computer?

Milosz

2

First of all, this is a known bug that doesn’t have anything to do with your project, or the transmission of it. Just make sure you always load a project from Scrivener, not from Explorer. I know, it’s annoying but the fix has been implemented and should be in the 1.2.4 update.

Perhaps you have something installed on one computer and not the other, for handling .zip files. I thought that contextual menu option was just a Windows thing, but I could be wrong. I have one on this computer, but I also have 7zip installed and a few other archive tools.

So, that aside, if you cannot extract the project from the .zip file with the contextual menu, Windows 7 can open .zip files in a window just fine. Double-click on it, drag the project folder out to where you wish to work on it, and you’re done.

It sounds like, toward the latter portion of your procedure, you tried to force Scrivener to load a .zip file. That’s not going to work. Zip files are a container and compression format. When something has been archived into a .zip container, it is no longer that thing. If you put a Word file into a .zip file, you would not be able to open the .doc file in MS Word by forcing it to try and load the .zip file.

3

Very many thanks for the information about the Scrivener glitch, AmberV, and I can now open the Scrivener project on the notebook as you indicated.

However another problem has arisen! On opening the project in the notebook, being new to the process, I added a few words of text just to make sure it was copied and I could access this on the desktop. But although Dropbox signified that new files had been added and it was up to date the new text didn’t appear when I accessed the project (correct time of saved project) on the desktop. Should much appreciate further advice on this.

4

It’s hard to say, a lot of things can wrong between A and Z here. The files you edited might never have been fully uploaded or the other computer might never have fully downloaded the updates. If you intend to edit projects directly on Dropbox, rather than using zip files, you should definitely read this article we’ve put together. There are some things you should know in there that will avoid problems. Using Dropbox for a complex format like Scrivener’s is okay, but it is easy to make a mess, and by extension easy to avoid doing so once you know what to look out for.