I followed these instructions to copy my files to a thumbdrive and then copied to the harddrive:
“It is important to remember that the entire folder needs to stay together. Your project
is not just the .scrivx file you use to load it, but all of the other folders and files around
the .scrivx file. To safely move a project, always move the entire container folder ending
in “.scriv”.”
However, Scrivener 1.7.3 installed on my new PC doesn’t see the project to open. I noticed since this upgrade that my project file name does not have the .scriv extension as it used to have with the older version. I tested, and, sure enough, only my older (before 1.7.3) backups show up and can be opened.
In Windows, the folder containing the project has a .scriv extension and the name is whatever you called it. The project file, OTOH, usually is named project.scrivx (note the .scrivx extension, with an x at the end) inside that folder.
Can you check that both the folder and the project file have the corresponding extensions on their names?
Actually, I wasn’t confused about the naming convention. My project’s name folder simply did not save/backup with the *.scriv extension. However, I just tried renaming the folder by typing in the extension, and Scrivener finally recognized it.
I did get a temporary loading error message, but it disappeared in a few seconds so I couldn’t say what that was about. The bottom line is I finally got my project to open. Yay!
BTW, the project file did not have the *.scrivx extension either. That might have been the source of the fleeting error message.
The file must have been marked as a .scrivx or it wouldn’t have opened, so I doubt the message was about that. If you don’t have Windows set to show all file extensions, however, the “.scrivx” would just be hidden. The folder’s “.scriv” extension should still show even when known file extensions are hidden, so I’m not sure what was going on there–perhaps the folder was renamed at some point and the extension accidentally removed? That extension doesn’t currently affect loading the project, but it helps keep things clearer and is important if you work cross-platform with the Mac, so I suggest adding it back to the project folder if it’s currently missing. (Do that of course when the project isn’t open in Scrivener.)
Thank you for the Microsoft link to extension. The project.scrivx file extension apparently was hidden, as it did work. It was the folder that might have had a hidden *.scriv extension, but it didn’t work because the folder was not correctly named. It just had X instead of X.scriv. My just typing in the *.scriv wouldn’t have “corrected” a missing extension.
It’s an anomaly I was happy to have simply fixed by experimenting. Fortunately, now that everything is on my new PC, my project is now backing up with the full file name.
Normally yes, if an extension is hidden, adding it to the file name would not fix the problem. So in the case of the .scrivx file you’d get a file named “project.scrivx.scrivx”. For the Scrivener project folder, however, the “.scriv” isn’t a registered extension on Windows, so it’s not something that would be hidden by the OS when hiding known extensions. Adding it doesn’t currently do anything as far as the OS or Scrivener is concerned (this may change in the future), but it makes it easier to recognise your project folders and, as I said, if you take the folder to a Mac, that extension is necessary.