I’m a professional editor. Can I edit documents on my PC that clients have created inside Scrivener on a Mac?
If you mean to swap a Scrivener project back and forth, yes, that is possible. We have an article on cross-platform compatibility. For the most part the differences between platforms will not concern editing, save for a few scenarios (some complex languages like Chinese can have difficulties between platforms).
If that’s not what you mean, and you’d rather see a more traditional document format, they can make that for you using the compile feature. This will just be a standard .docx file, just as if they had made it in Word.
Thank you so much for your reply, Amber. Yes, I mean taking a folder someone has sent me via Dropbox, that they have written in Scrivener on their MacBook, to have me edit it in Scrivener on my PC.
I’ve chosen the free trial for now. Will my client’s file automatically open in my Scrivener as soon as I click on the folder he’s left in my Dropbox?
Once you get the whole project downloaded, you can double-click on the .scrivx file, inside the main project folder (the one that ends in .scriv). The main thing you should be cautious of is making sure you aren’t both working on the project at the same time.
Not sure what you mean by downloaded – I already downloaded Scrivener and Dropbox themselves – but when I open Scrivener, I first have to click on “Try” as it’s the free trial, then go to the bottom left to choose which document to open.
I’m sorry, I’m not sure what to do now. The problem is that when I try to open my client’s document, it’s entirely blank! We don’t know what to do.
He swears his document is completely full, but it opens on empty on my end.
Is there any chance at all that this is a problem of incompatibility? He has the Mac version of Scrivener and created his doc on his Mac. I’m on a PC and am trying to receive the document in the Windows version. He’s pretty experienced in Scrivener already and neither of us can figure out why I’m getting only the titles and not the full doc.
Please help us.
Assuming that the files are syncing, so that when you open the project’s .scriv folder in Dropbox on Windows you do see all the various folders and files (e.g.you should see a lot of numbered files within the Files/Docs directory), then this post might help.
If the files aren’t there, then it looks like a problem with Dropbox not syncing correctly. You may want to try clearing the Dropbox cache, rebooting the machines, and other Dropbox troubleshooting steps to make sure all the files within the project folder are fully synced.
I appreciate all your input on this.
When my client put his document, created in Scrivener on his MacBook, into Dropbox for me to pick up on my PC, what I found was a near-empty page with only titles on it. He said it should have been the entire book. With a publication deadline, he ended up converting it to a Word doc and sending it to me that way.
When I finished editing, I saved it in Dropbox. When he picked it up, he found it had cut off 2/3 of the document. I ended up attaching it to a gmail, where he picked up the whole thing.
I’m not sure what happened with Dropbox, but about Scrivener, do you think I should buy the “combined” PC and Mac version? I’d really appreciate opinions on this. I’m brand new with this.