I am a long time Scrivener user–composed my soon to be published memoir on it–in the editing stages now. Years of work stored there obviously, and I have never had any issue in the past. But yesterday, my computer crashed while using Scrivener. When I restarted the computer, and then tried to open Scrivener again, I got this error message. “Could not open project.” Underneath that, it said, “The binder file appears to have been corrupted. Try restoring a backed-up project, or create a new project and use File>Import>Scrivener Project to retrieve work from this project (structure information will be lost).”
Obviously I do not want to create a NEW project. And as far as back-up, I do have cloud storage (Crash Plan). But I do not completely understand how cloud storage works with Scrivener. I tried to restore what appeared to be my most recent version of my draft, and after an hour or so of loading, I opened it and it was an ANCIENT draft. A draft from 6 years ago, missing thousands of notecards and scans. And when I try to open my current project, I continue to get the error message. Any help would be most appreciated. I am finding: “Could not open project,” is the cruelest phrase in the English language.
Just an update, I checked up on my Time Machine, and it’s last backup was in August 2012. Probably when I started using cloud storage. So I doubt this could help out. Are there other “local backups” on Mac, other than Time Machine?
Yes, but only if you have told Scrivener to make local backups for you.
In Scrivener, go to Preferences and then choose the Backup tab (as in the picture given on the link above). If Scrivener has been making local backups, you’ll find the details there.
Forgive me. This is my first time using this forum. But I don’t see the link you mentioned. And when I go to Scrivener> Preferences, I don’t see a Backup tab (I see “General,” Text Editing," "Typography, “Fonts and Colors,” “Navigation” and “Full Screen.”). I am certain I have made a few Scrivener back-ups in the past, but infrequently. I am not sure if it has been making local backups…
And just a point of clarification-- yes, I was able to open the link you mentioned earlier in this thread. But I wasn’t able to find that menu on my Mac. Anything about “back-ups” directed me always to Time Machine…
Thanks Brian. I left them an email yesterday, and haven’t heard back yet. But as a fellow writer, I am sure you understand that I am exploring all of my options, to resolve these issues as quickly as possible. Regardless, I do appreciate you trying to assist me in this matter. Cheers.
Thanks. They mention DropBox in that thread and I use that program sometimes. I will look into this more, and will have some tech savvy friends with me tomorrow, if I am still struggling.
And sorry about the name misspelling. My mistake. And such a great name too. Reminds me of that old fable.
I’m sure one of the support people will be in touch soon. It sounds to me as if you are still running version 1.5x, rather than 2.x if that’s what you found. It should still be making automatic back-ups, though, if I remember rightly; you could try using spotlight in the finder and at search for .bak.zip or failing that *.zip or *.bak and then just go through them to find the latest.
That said, Ioa, Katherine, Siren or whoever can give you more formal advice on how to retrieve your project, especially if I’m right that you are running 1.5x rather than 2.x
Thanks so much Mark. You are right, I AM using Scrivener version 1.5.4, and to the best of my knowledge it was making nearly constant back-ups. How to retrieve those back-ups are a different story. The whole process is a little nerve wracking but I will see if Spotlight pulls up anything. But like I said earlier in this thread, I’m grateful for any suggestions.
My heart always sinks when I see this. Cloud storage is not a sufficient backup scheme unless it gets all of your documents and programs and settings, and also has a long history of previous file versions. Consider turning Time machine back on–having more than one way to get to your files if something happens to your computer is essential if you value your data and the time it would normally take to set up your (repaired or replaced) computer again.
Having Time Machine connected all the time means hourly backups going back 24 hours, daily backups going back 30 days, and weekly backups until your backup drive fills up, which can be well over a year (depending on the relative size of your backup drive vs how much of your HD is full). Even if you only connect TM once a day or even once a week, it’s still hugely helpful to have local backups of your whole computer.
FWIW, Scrivener has had a back-up service right from the start IIRC, part of the motivation for its development having been the well-known and not-infrequently experienced flakiness of MS Word with long-form documents in early/mid-2000s versions. Where, or indeed whether, it was handled in the Preferences I don’t recall.
LMN, you mention not having received anything from support: have you whitelisted our support address yet, tenderapp.com? Meanwhile, check your spam filter, because you should already have two responses from me.
Scrivener 1.x has no automatic backups. If the off-site backup is incomplete/old and there are no recent backups around the house either, then one will need to rebuild the project from recovered data using the method described in the original error message. I’ve detailed all of this in my e-mails.
I agree. I’m keeping Time Machine on in the future. But currently, I am still just trying to recover the lost data. And the Scrivener support team hasn’t gotten back to me yet…
