I’m writing this because I love scrivener and I want to make sure that issues that might be annoying other users but can’t be explained by them get fixed. This issue took some looking and some screenshots.
For this I have to make a note that I store my scrivener files in dropbox [and I also backup to the iCloud so things are backed up in different locations].
Been getting a crash issue in the app after I updated dropbox. I cannot remember all of the options that I did when I updated dropbox. I think I hadn’t updated dropbox in a while and after I updated the app it asked me something about moving my dropbox folder to a new location. The new location is still on the harddrive. To be honest I don’t remember where the old location was exactly. If I’m seeing things correctly the original location was in the root folder of my user account. This is what it looks like now AFTER the upgrade of dropbox:
It looks like the original dropbox folder has been replaced with a forwarding link.
This link forwards to: /Users/admin/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox on my computer.
Now, I tried something to fix this. I just changed the option to make files available offline instead of Online-only:
Just to be thorough the dropbox folder on the left sidebar looks like this now:
It’s in a place called Locations.
I can’t remember what the crash report said and I didn’t send it in, I do know it started happening after I updated DropBox and did the suggestion where I changed the directory. I changed the option in dropbox to make the files available offline and will see if that helps anything. I’m guessing it will.
Also in the app I went to File>Recent Projects>Clear Menu and I reopened my scrivener file from the new location in DropBox so that the app could “forget” the old location and not use the forwarding link.
Also, before this Scrivener NEVER crashed. I mean never. It is rock solid. It doesn’t even hiccup. I had never even seen a scrivener crash screen! This all happened right after I updated DropBox.
Another thing I did was follow the suggestion from the dropbox forum to allow full harddrive access to dropbox. It looks like things are syncing up now. I’m wondering if this will fix the issue.
I think this actually fixed the issue. So far I haven’t had any more crashes. My dropbox folder on my mac now has the green checkmark next to each file.
I actually never realized that the green checkmark was missing. When I upgraded dropbox the green checkmarks disappeared and I didn’t even notice. The green checkmarks just mean that the file is downloaded and sitting on my computer. It also means, according to dropbox, that the file is synced, but dropbox doesn’t have real robust syncing abilities. [Robust abilities would require something like the requirement to “check-out” a file, and when you are done “return” the file. That way the file belongs to only one application at a time.]
I have never had any problems with the new location of Dropbox. But beware of Dropbox setting your Scrivener files as online… you must make sure the folder where your Scrivener projects are stored is always available offline.
Dropbox doesn’t need to check out Scrivener files—I can imagine that causing all sorts of problems—as when a project is open on a computer, Scrivener creates a user.lock file and if you try to open the file on another machine, you can only open a copy and to do so is the path to “lost work”.
Also, deleting the user.lock file is the last step in closing the project and sync’ing, and if you’re too quick to close down after finishing work it can be left behind and you get the alert “Project is open on another machine”, when you know it isn’t.
