I have a lot of scrivener files that I ported over from my older (mac) computer to my new (windows) computer, only scrivener can’t open them. The are treated by the system as file folders, which is understandable for a computer without scrivener, but not with. Now, when I do Ctr+o or open existing project, it takes me into the projects and shows me the folders that I made within those projects, but none of the actual files. How can I get scrivener to open .scriv files?
Thanks.
PS. even projects I created on this computer behave the same way. Why?
Thank you both. After searching a little, I could find the project.scrivx files in the scrivener documents from windows. The ones from mac, however, still lack even that. Instead, they have a binder.scrivproj file, a BinderStrings.xml, ui.xml, and info.plist files. Perhaps one of those can be successfully converted to a scrivx file?
Ah, that would be the relevant footnote on the page of that section I referred you to. The 1.x format is not cross-platform compatible. When it was conceived, the notion of a Windows version of Scrivener was a laughable pipe dream. Format 2.x was completely revamped to use standard spec formats like XML and RTF instead of Mac specific binary formats.
So yes, these can be updated to “a .scrivx”, using a newer version of Scrivener, and if you wish to work cross-platform, the you should consider upgrading your Mac to 2.x anyway. It’s only $25 if you have an existing licence. Upgrade from the homepage with the Update from 1.0 link to get the coupon.
I’m having similar issues with opening files that I created on my mac on a windows computer. The .scrivx files are in the folder, and I double click to open them, but nothing happens. I have also tried opening them from within scrivener, but again, nothing happens when I select the file.
Okay, that sounds like a different problem to me. The other person was trying to open old project files, and if you have .scrivx files then you should be on the right version. It could be something a minor incompatibility problem; we still have a few of those where projects refuse to open if certain conditions exist within the project from the Mac. Would you mind sending a copy of the recalcitrant project to us for analysis? If that’s okay, zip compress it and attach it to an e-mail to windows.support AT literatureandlatte DOT com. Thanks!
I had a similar issue with a recent Scrivener file. I was running the latest versions of Scrivener-for-windows and Scrivener-for-mac. I saved and closed the file on my mac, waited for Dropbox to sync, then opened it on my windows computer. The file behaved as Sheardy described: Open the .scrivx file, and nothing happens.
I opened the .scriv container and discovered several “Conflicted copy” files while poking around. When Dropbox isn’t 100% sure which file is the right file to sync, it’ll make a conflicted copy of the file so that nothing is lost. Dropbox recognizes the .scriv files as containers, and syncs every individual file within, instead of treating the .scriv as a single unit. Thus, the internal tree had several conflicted copies of individual files from an earlier botched sync.
I deleted all the conflicted copies (I knew from the dates Dropbox added to their titles that none of them were recent) and tried opening the document again. It worked flawlessly on the second try.
So, if you’re using Dropbox to sync, and you’re trying to open a file in windows, you should check for conflicted-copy files inside your .scriv. The OS X version seems to ignore them, but they’re tripping the Windows version up.
Thanks for posting that, resolving conflicts is good advice if using synchronisation software. I’ve noted problems opening projects with a lot of conflict files in them as well. It sounds like, since the dates were old, it’s not a common problem for you, but you might give §13.6 a skim in the Mac user manual (ch.12 in Windows) for some bullet tips on avoiding conflicts. It’s just basic stuff like making sure the project completely uploads before putting the computer to sleep.