Can't find/locate/see my project on scrivener windows 10

[SANATANSHAKTI]

Namaskar Everyone:
Seemingly, I’m not able to open/locate/find my “project” on the Scrivener Laptop computer since 30 December 2022. For about a few months, since I was not able to work on my project on the “live Scrivener” site, I had opened my backup folder and was working/writing there. (IS THAT A GOOD IDEA; IF NOT, HOW CAN I KEEP MY SCRIVENER 1, UPTO DATE TO SCRIVENER 3, AND WORK ON MY PROJECT THERE – SINCE, THE PROJECT I WAS WORKING ON, I’M NOT ABLE TO “SEE” MY CURRENT PROJECT THERE, BY CLICKING THE “RECENT PROJECT” – ONLY DIFFERENT PROJECTS.
After opening Scrivener on Windows 10, I would go to “Tools” >> “Options” >> “Backup” >> “Choose” >> “Open Backup Folder”: still, I can’t find the project either on the Scrivener itself or the Dropbox folder!
I have tried all the methods of trying to relocate my file, but once, on 31 December 2022, when I had again found it and had backed it up again, I’m not able to find the project-file again. I should state that I’m not that computer & technological savvy – so, you may have to not only guide me into relocating my “apparent” lost project but send me all the pertinent information and video-links for this and related problems. AND, WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO BACKUP A PROJECT, FIND THE “LOST” PROJECT & ONCE AGAIN, WRITE ON THE “LIVE” PROJECT (I hadn’t known what “live” project meant until I faced this particular issue)?
Indeed, Scrivener automatically saves the information, every two seconds or so but, as notably guided by Scrivener, does one CLICK save, save as, backup now or back to in order to save to documents, dropbox and external hard drive? Again, by doing so, do the files get overwritten and is that the reason as to why I have not been able to find my, probable, lost project? Again, although there is information on the Internet as to how to save to an external hard drive, so far, I haven’t come across one – giving the step by step information as to how to do that.
Expecting that someone will fruitfully guide me,
Namaskar and Stay Well,

Mr. Harishchandra Shah[5 January 2023]
P.S. Thank you in advance for helping me and hope that the answer will help other Scrivener Users, too.

[narrsd]

Well, greetings to you also, Mr. Shah,

It looks that at least one other person has had a look in here, then coming to feel as I do, that the untangling your need is better handled quietly by someone from Scrivner support who is particularly adept at such things, and has the materials that can help ready at hand.

I’m thinking of @RuthA, in particular, and hope that using her name will draw her here when she’s avaialble. But there is one thing that fell out for me from your tale, which might be quite helpful to begin with in understanding.

As I seem to hear it, you’ve used two versions of Scrivener by now, starting with Version 1 and then moving to Version 3. That’s perfectly fine, and what most of us here have done. But I think you are saying you became confused because you didn’t see projects from Version 1 showing up in Recent Projects on Version 3 – and so begins the trail towards engaging with backups, etc…

The key to this is that Version 1 and Version 3 are entirely separate programs. Neither ever knows what the other is doing, This is convenient when persons want to move only some projects to the newer version, while still working in the old version on others. But it also means that ‘Recent Projects’ are going to list only those recent to that version.

When you want to move to working on a past project in your new Version 3 Scrivener, you would need to Open it there, from the File menu, and then that project would be converted, so that it is now in Version 3 form. It will no longer open in Version 1, though a safety copy is kept, not visibly, just in case of problems. You’d work on it then in Scrivener 3 , and from that point backups would also be kept in Scrivener 3 form. That the project stays in the same place means any setups like Dropbox, or for another, your backups, remain just where you expect them.

You should understand this is deliberately a very simple organization. Almost all software is very simple-minded – it asks that you know and follow its own idea for organization. Scrivener’s is very well thought out to offer reliability – not losing things by having to move them , or due to any moment of failure in computers or networks themselves…

This leads me to my second and last topic: backups. Backups are again a simple thing, for one purpose only: to keep copies, over a period of time, in case you need to recover something. To answer your capitalized words clearly, no, you should not be opening them and using them in your writing practice. I’m not clear how you are even doing that, since Scrivenr backups are each contained in a zip file. The proper idea is that you don’t touch them, unless you have a serious problem. Then you would copy the zip file to another location, very separate from your working project and the backups equally – then unzip it. You could then open this earlier project status from where you’ve unzipped, and use it to compare or copy material into your working project for some kind of recovery.

To be clear, you wouldn’t edit, or continue on working, from the unzipped backup, ever.

Now though I think we are in the midst of your troubles, since it appears you have been doing something like that – working with multiple ‘extra’ projeccts this way. It is the most usual way persons ‘lose’ their work.

The good thing is that with care to become organized again in what you do, it should be possible to recover. You’d need to settle once again on a single central working project file, nowhere near the backups or these extra copies. Then you can look in each of the unzipped backups you’ve done something with in error, and recover what is in them.

Simplicity and directness are the key to not having these problems. It is just like papers or notebooks with a desk – you don’t want a lot of them scattered around; you want just the one for each project on its own. You’ll know what you have and where, while you’ll be helping the program in what I asssure you is its like simplemindedness , and it will work.

Hoping this excursion helps, and then Ruth can probably help your fixing up and with better pictures if needed, from the Support materials.

Best fortune,
Clive