Hi there,
I haven’t use Scrivener as I had other work in about 3 months, now went I went to open I had a ‘choose backup folder’ type of message but I confess I didn’t read through in detail and clicked ok. From what I found online this may have overrun my previous projects (I had 4!!). So naturally I am a little bit desperate now, I had made a fair bit of progress with every project - and I thought this was the safe option, where I wouldn’t likely ever loose my work! I can’t seem to find anything on my desktop/aircloud either. However, when I right click on the Scrivener application I can see all my projects there, they just don’t open even if I click on them. (Can send a screenshot) Any ideas if or how I can fix this? Most appreciate the support!!
You can locate all projects on your computer by searching for .scriv files in Finder.
Right-clicking on the Scrivener icon will show you Scrivener’s Recent Projects list, which is not necessarily an accurate list of what’s actually on your computer.
Have you enabled iCloud’s “Optimize Mac Storage” feature? You’ll find the setting under iCloud in the Internet Accounts pane of your System Settings.
Thank you, I’ll try that - searching .scriv in Finder doesn’t get me anything.
Would it be possible to find it under Scrivener’s own backup system?
Ah yes I can confirm the ‘Optimize Mac Storage’ option has been on this whole time.
@kewms - isn’t the optimize mac storage setting/cloud setting the one that causes problems in scrivener?
@antiqueiranatalia I would wait for a reply from tech support(kewms or @AmberV ) before doing anything. I am not a mac user, but there are numerous mentions of this setting in the forum. If I’m not mistaken, this setting alters some of Scriveners file (names?).
That setting would not, in theory, hide an entire project, but it might delete some or all of the content within the project. The way these sorts of features work is by pretending the thing is there in Finder, but it will have a different icon or something beside it, indicating it’s not really there. The file should show up in a search, but it’s kind of cosmetic only until you try to load it, and then it downloads it.
We don’t really have a strong confirmation either way, whether it really does that for packages like .scriv, because it’s a bit difficult to test. With other “smart sync” features it is a lot more obvious and there are commands to download/offload manually, but with iCloud, the result is more complicated and vague. It’s been stated it only kicks in if your drive is getting full, and then only to remove things that haven’t been modified in a long time, first. Technically parts of your project could qualify that way as Scrivener only updates what you edit, meaning some things in a project could be years old.
On the other hand you’d think Apple, who makes iCloud and who also designs the multi-file format Scrivener uses, would anticipate the glaringly obvious fact that if something is inside a package, it isn’t a form of “optimisation” to delete parts of what is otherwise treated as a file. That would be like designing a sync engine that deletes parts of your .docx file that you haven’t edited recently.
But we don’t really know for sure, so it is safest to suggest this option be disabled. Besides, it is a good thing to disable anyway. Cloud services deleting stuff from your computer, for whatever reason, generally aren’t doing so in your best interest. It’s a way of making it more difficult to switch to a different service. It also compromises your own personal backups and Time Machine, since you no longer have the things you think you have. You might make the argument it saves space, but that should be something you do, rather than delegating to an algorithm and hoping it does the best thing for your data.
As for finding old backups, it sounds like it’s been long enough that Scrivener’s “first run” tool ran when you launched it. Whether you chose the same backup folder you were using before is uncertain. You can look for where they would be by default, by using the “Reveal Support Folder in Finder” menu command under the main Scrivener menu, and you should find a backups folder there.
But, if you had customised the setup and saved them elsewhere, that won’t be where they are. It’s worth noting that by default backups will be .zip files, not .scriv files. So that’s another search you can try. I mention the above first though, because I think Spotlight doesn’t find things in Application Support.
Thank you all very much. Sadly none of this has worked (tried searching .zip). I just don’t understand how the files would simply disappear? Probably they were overrun when I re-launched the app after a few months, but why have this option to begin with? And are there really no way of recovering it if that’s the case?
Probably they were overrun when I re-launched the app after a few months, but why have this option to begin with?
No that would be entirely impossible (assuming I understand what you mean by “overrun”, I am not familiar with that term in a technical capacity). Worst case, if you uninstall Scrivener or copy your files to another computer and don’t install it, they will be there but they will look like normal folders until you install Scrivener. There is nothing that software can do, at least software that works like this (obviously some programs are designed to add and delete files, like cloud services) that would make things vanish—and especially not just because you didn’t use it for a while.
The one thing that is a little odd is that you mention the projects are listed as recent projects when you right-click on Scrivener’s icon in the dock. It is certainly possible for this to malfunction I am sure, but normally this system would clean out any references to files that no longer exist. Unfortunately Apple provides no “look up” function for these, to show their location, and it sounds like it has no error reporting if whatever is listed doesn’t open for some reason. That’s all very strange and not normal Mac behaviour, normally you would get an error—but maybe if iCloud was messing with them, there is something going on there that isn’t right. What I said before is all theoretical. Under normal conditions I don’t think it would work the way you describe, but iCloud is a very complicated system (and I’m not super familiar with it, so I’m not the best to ask about extended recovery tips).
So you don’t have any backups of your computer or user folder at all from the past months?
Thank you, I thought so… doesn’t seem like something that this (or most) softwares would do!
Yes I agree, don’t see why the file names would be there if - from what it looks at the other end- they no longer exist at all.
I guess I should have, let me look further into it with someone who knows Mac well.
Thanks again!
My hunch. You turning on Apple Mac’s “optimise storage” option which deletes files on the laptop to “help” you save space. What files and when is only known to Apple. I do not know how to safely without risk turn it off. Yes, involve someone who know Mac well.
Scrivener requires all files in a project to be ‘offline’ and on the local machine, not “online”.
Thanks all, I have spoken to Mac support and they have advised that since Scrivener is not an app that saves on our hard drive normally this could’ve been the issue and I need to talk to the App developer support (since it’s a third party application/not Mac) to get;
Trouble shooting;
Find copy of the docs;
How to get a copy of that outside the app.
Is anyone able to tell me how/where I can get support from Scrivener?
Thanks!
N
Huh? Scrivener most definitely does normally save to the local hard drive.
You are in the official Scrivener support forum. If you’d like to open a support ticket, you can do so here:
AmberV is the head of support, though, so you’re already connected with the best available advice.
Ok, no necessary tone if I read it correctly… I must have miss explained.
And ok 2, thanks - is it possible to get support trouble shooting then from here or best to open a ticket? @AmberV
Thank you
N
Apologies, as I’m not in front of my Mac in order to test these suggestions before posting to make sure they work, but I wanted to share in case you’re up against an urgent deadline. Double apols - you may have already tried these, so sorry if that’s the case.
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try searching for the specific project name instead of the .scriv or .zip extensions. The ones that show up on the app icon are a great place to start.
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try searching for text you know would appear somewhere in the files. Character names, for example.
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try rebuilding the spotlight index - it’s very odd it’s not showing any Scriv files at all.
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open Scriv and start a new tutorial and see where it asks you to save it. Also test to see if spotlight can actually find that file too.
There is also the matter of checking your Spotlight settings and making sure your user folder, or where you save projects, isn’t blocked. But Spotlight is not infallible, it’s a convenience tool for how fast it is, but it doesn’t actually search your disks nor know anything about it. It is searching an index, which can be wrong. The tips above are good for checking that out.
By the way, the best way to run a Spotlight search for Scrivener projects in general is to use the File ▸ Find All Projects in Spotlight. Or, if you have the version sold by Apple, which does not allow software to open Spotlight windows for some reason, then manually type in: kind:Scrivener Project into the search bar. Then ensure that the toolbar has “This Mac” highlighted, and not some folder (which it should by default).
It should be baffling that Apple refused to help you find your files, and provide the kind of basic system troubleshooting you are having to get here, simply because those files were made by another program. But it isn’t baffling, because that is how lazy their tech support is. 
They see the word “Scrivener” and it’s an immediate bounce—we see it almost every day. My advice to anyone contacting Apple support, never bring up the name of any software you use. Speak only in terms of needing to solve a problem abstractly or in relation to the operating system. You lost some files, that is all they need to know. If they ask you what program saved the files, brush it off and tell them that isn’t relevant because you know the file names or whatever.
I digress; people losing track of where they put things, or the operating system losing track of where they went (which is what you see when you right-click in the Dock, the Recent list isn’t technically Scrivener any more), is something that happens. There is a lot of advice here already on the forum worth searching for.
For example, there is this post, for all the times Spotlight doesn’t work. That describes a method of actually searching your files, not the index, and so it will take a long time. For example, in that thread the user accidentally trashed their projects. Spotlight won’t find them if they are trashed, but those steps will.
Feel free to write in to tech support and open a ticket if you want, but there isn’t a lot we can do, other than this, given how you are given the freedom to store things wherever you want, there are no easy answers.
Isn’t the key issue that the OP reports that “Optimize Mac Storage” was turned “ON” … which means that Apple may have deleted local files to “help” by saving disk space?
Meaning to me that searching locally may or may not find the *.scriv package, nor perhaps will local searching find all the component parts in that package?
Or maybe I’ve got the wrong end of the stick here. Happy to be proved wrong!
I do not know how to (without risk) turn “OFF” Optimise Mac Storage, find stuff that may not be there, nor do I know how to restore files that may have been deleted by Apple’s Optimise Mac Storage.
p.s. Is there a way in the startup routine of Scrivener to check for “optimise mac storage” turned on and look for Dropbox (or other) set for “online” files … then warn user?
@AmberV Apple was actually extremely helpful, I shared my screen and we went through everything, all possible options for recovering files and like I said, there just wasn’t anything there. I approached and they treated like missed files - only when we really couldn’t find it we went through Scrivener end and after a bit the attendant advised they could go no further trouble shooting as it is a third party software which honestly makes sense.
I had read through the posts and as you can/can’t see none of them actually met my issue exactly.
In terms of folder I have minimalist and organised and I would not have ‘lost’ it myself. Nothing else seems to be missing on my dock so I see this only as an issue from the saving system implemented in the software.
No need to respond any further.
Again, I don’t have a ton of experience with iCloud, and in particular with this setting since I’ve never used it on a real account long enough for it ever do anything. But I’m pretty sure that even if it does wipe out the contents of a .scriv folder (which is a theory, it may not even actually do that), it would still leave an entry for it somewhere, so that you can double-click on something to in theory restore it. It isn’t going to remove all traces of .zip files, .scriv files and any other kind of files so that you would have no evidence that they ever existed.
Now as to whether a deeper scouring of the drive would uncover them, that I don’t know. Does it leave an empty .scriv folder in the iCloud caching system in ~/Library? Maybe, and if it does it would find it, but not the contents.
As for what happens when you turn it off, it should immediately start downloading everything to the drive and “fleshing out” those markers I speak of.
Okay, glad to hear you got better support than we often see evidence of. 
Sure, I didn’t mean to imply anything by that, or that you personally trashed the projects and they are lost in .Trash—just that there are tools that can do a deeper search and find things Spotlight can’t find, which can happen even in cases where everything is stored neatly and properly.
As for Scrivener’s saving implementation, there is nothing unique or special about it. We use stock system mechanisms across the board save for one thing: when zipping backups we do use the command line for that, since the stock tools do not have a good mechanism for creating zip files. The “Recent” list you get when right-clicking on anything in the Dock is something produced by the system, which should be keeping track of what is or isn’t there (as noted before), so I’m not sure why that isn’t working properly or why you aren’t getting any errors when trying to use it.
If for example iCloud did “clean” the contents of the .scriv and isn’t downloading it, then Scrivener would throw an error about it being unable to locate vital internal components of the project. This is an error message you see a lot of, when searching for “.scrivproj”, because it goes on to speculate the project may be very old since it doesn’t look valid, and that’s an old file name.
So something weird is going on overall with the infrastructure outside of Scrivener, but I can’t think of anything like this, these symptoms you describe.
Can’t vouch for accuracy of these, but this matches my understanding of how Apple’s disk optimisation works.
I don’t use it and never had to recover from it.
Simple:
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