I have Scrivener on my Mac, and share my files via Dropbox (if it’s relevant). I just downloaded the Windows Scrivener trial and attempted to open one of my existing projects that was created on my Mac (OS X Lion). When opening the project file (Project.scriv/Project.scrivx), Scrivener tells me it’s not a valid Scrivener project file.
Scrivener for Windows does open projects created on Windows; it seems to only be those generated on the Mac that don’t work. I have confirmed the project in question does open on my Mac (and is not open when trying to open it on Windows).
Running Windows 7 64-bit.
Sorry if this has already been discussed/resolved.
The folks at Lit & Lat are hard at work solving this bug that cropped up from the latest release. To get around it, launch scrivener, and then use the open existing project dialogue to navigate to your project and open it.
This is a long-shot, but what version of Scrivener are you running on your mac? Version 1 (mac) projects are incompatible with the Windows version of Scrivener. Version 2 of the Mac version will convert old projects to the new format, which is compatible.
Another long-shot: what is the content of the version.txt file (found in your project.scriv/Files folder)? it should have a number, like 16 (what mine currently contains on a test project). Sometimes syncing wipes it out and causes this kind of trouble.
If that’s not it, then I’d contact support directly, since the Open dialogue isn’t working, and you clearly know what file to select to get it to open (the .scrivx file) under normal circumstances.
Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately (well, in this case it is unfortunate), my Mac is running the latest version of Scrivener 2. I checked the version.txt file as well, and the number it has is also 16.
Looks like it’s time to write an email to tech support. Thanks.
You probably have conflicted files in your project due to a problematic Dropbox sync. First backup the project folder by right-clicking the .scriv folder and choosing “Send to \ Compressed (zipped) folder”. Then open up the .scriv folder and look for any files with “so-and-so’s conflicted copy” in the name, then remove them from the project (I recommend just moving them to the desktop or such rather than deleting them, in case you end up needing anything in them). After you’ve removed the extraneous files, the Windows version of Scrivener should be able to open it properly.
For best practices using Dropbox, take a look at this article.