I wanted to continue writing my book today, but Scrivener won’t open it anymore.
Every time I try to open it, it crashes (demo). I already tried suggestions that I found in this forum or Reddit, like deleting the preferences file (i.e. resetting them) or moving the file out of Dropbox.
None of those change a thing, the document shows for a split second and then Scriver’s process is gone. I found that there’s a log file in the support folder, but it doesn’t have much:
2025-02-07 13:14:20.355 Scrivener[2272:43736] Warning: Column selection is not supported in view-based table and outline views (<NSTableView: 0x7fb5cc833800>).
2025-02-07 13:14:20.559 Scrivener[2272:43736] WARNING: Secure coding is automatically enabled for restorable state! However, not on all supported macOS versions of this application. Opt-in to secure coding explicitly by implementing NSApplicationDelegate.applicationSupportsSecureRestorableState:.
Could you please help me out? I really want to continue writing!
For future reference, our support ticket system tracks things and therefore is a bit more reliable. You can open a support ticket here: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/contact-us
If you did, and it didn’t help, have you installed any new software since you last worked on the project successfully? New Mac OS version? New utilities? Anything else?
I cannot remember installing anything in the time that it went from working to not working. I definitely installed the latest macOS update after it was already crashing, because I thought it might repair it.
That’s a good thing to try. I’d also try installing the previous version, from this page, just to rule out any possible issue with the update.
moving the file out of Dropbox
For future reference, that shouldn’t have anything to do with anything. At most, if a singular project is crashing on load then moving it around might allow Scrivener to launch, if you use the option to automatically reload projects that were left open, and if the system doesn’t track where it went successfully when you moved it.
More reliably, and less disruptively (especially where large-scale cloud delete/upload cycles go), you can hold the Shift key down while launching Scrivener, to inhibit the loading of any projects.
But in this case you were able to launch it anyway, since you mentioned trying with the tutorial project.
It happening with an older version as well got me thinking outside the Scrivener box. It’s not the hardware though, as everything else runs smoothly.
I have Swift Quit installed because it’s an old Mac with not much RAM. Now when you select a recent document, the welcome window closes before the main UI opens. I think Switft Quit was triggered even though another window comes up quickly after.
