Can't open project - due to 'incompatible version'??

I’m trying to open a project I have been using up until Tuesday this week. The project won’t open and I get the same error message over an over again - see attached screen grab. It says the file isn’t compatible with my version of Scrivener. But I haven’t changed my version of Scrivener or the project since I last opened it earlier in the week.

I REALLY need to get this project back as it’s got MONTHS of work in it :frowning:

Please help!

scrivenererror.jpg

PS I’ve tried the steps suggested in Knowledge Base where I put “16” into the version.txt file. The error message doesn’t come up any more but the file just never opens…

Using OneDrive?
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/cant-access-files-after-restoring-to-a-new-pc/29200/1

Got a recent backup that is working?

Hi Brian - no I’m not using OneDrive. I was storing it on Google Drive (ironically because I thought it was safer there than on my hard drive) but it sounds like that was an error on my part as it looks like that’s the reason it corrupted. I don’t have a back-up. Google Drive was my back up.

I’ve sent it to the tech team to look at but I’m not hugely hopeful of getting it restored.

They’ll probably advise something like this: Go to Tools->Options->Backup, click on the “Open backup Folder” button. Copy files there that match your project name to some other folder (maybe even make one on your desktop called “scriv backups”. You don’t want to rely on those files remaining present while you work on finding a good copy, and you don’t want to edit backups in the backups folder; that gets really confusing, really quickly.

If the copied files end in .zip extensions, then you can right-click on the most recent one and “extract all”, then you can open it in scrivener. If that one opens, then you hopefully have everything you need. If anything’s wrong with it, try the next oldest one.

Good luck!

Wow thanks so much! This is great … I have a more-or-less up to date version now so even if the original can’t be restored I haven’t lost everything! :astonished: :smiley:

Hooray! :smiley:

One Drive & Google Drive aren’t very friendly to Scrivener, so I’d keep the “live” projects (ones you are actively editing) out of those sync folders. Dropbox and Cubby seem to work well, with the former being supported in the upcoming Scrivener for iOS.

You can go to your backups settings and set your automatic backups to go to either 1D or GD, especially if you turn on the ZIP compression option. That’s safe enough, so long as you don’t try to extract & edit those backups in either of those folders.