Dropbox sync error

I’ve been using the fantastic Scrivener iOS version over the past couple of weeks–its put new life into my scrivener workflow, which was dragging because I could only work at my Mac and I’m on the road so much.

However, now I’ve run into some kind of sync issue. I keep getting a “file upload failed” error. I’ve turned off dropbox sync on my macbook (since that’s what the error message suggests) but still no go. I’ve tried the sync on my phone, my iPad, and now I’m staring at my macbook and I can see that the “sync conflicts” document keeps getting updated in my dropbox/apps/scrivener/ folder. This is making me crazy and since no one here has reported this I can only assume there must be a quick fix? What would you suggest…should i delete something somewhere in order to re-sync it properly? I think it got stuck updating a file because I had a bad mobile connection when I was out, and now it’s in a loop. That would be my guess…?

Here’s a screen capture of the error on my iPad:

Thanks for any help!

I’d suggest clearing the Dropbox cache, which you can do via the Scrivener section of the iOS Settings app. Scroll down to the Reset Scrivener command at the bottom, and pick Clear Dropbox Sync Cache from the list of choices.

Katherine

Thank you very much for such a quick reply! I’ve tried doing exactly that–multiple times–and I’ve still got the same error. Do you suppose there is something wrong with the actual file that it is trying to download and merge? I’ve opened it on my Mac and it is behaving normally.

Next thing to try: On the Mac, move the project to a location outside the Dropbox folder. Then delete it from all devices. Sync as many times as necessary to make sure it’s really gone. Then move it back.

Katherine

I just fixed it! Let me tell you what I did just in case this helps others. It’s actually not far off from your suggestion.

At the top of my Mac screen I can see the Dropbox icon, and if I click on it I can see what has updated and when (as “recently changed”). Because my Scrivener folder now lives in Dropbox, every time I tried to sync and failed, the conflict errors would be generated and it would show in the Dropbox list of recently changed files. I noticed that one particular jpg kept coming up as a conflict, so I just deleted it. Problem solved, everything syncs perfectly now.

So for future reference…isolate the problem file…either delete it or as suggested, try moving the project somewhere outside of Dropbox in order to get the bad version off the iOS devices before trying to re-sync. But I think it’s super useful to be able to see exactly which file causes the conflict! That was a great way to design this app because I could see it generating all those errors. Thanks so much! (now back to work!)