I’ve been using Scrivener for Windows for a couple of years - syncing several projects across 3 PC’s using SugarSync and more recently Cubby. I’ve had absolutely no problems related to syncing. A week ago I decided to take the plunge and buy a Mac. I successfully synced all my work in progress (several projects) to the Mac, using Cubby. I then worked on a small project on the Mac, using some of the nice ‘Mac only’ features. As an aside, I now wish I had switched to the Mac version a long time ago. However, that’s not the issue at hand. Just to check everything out, I shut down the Mac, allowing adequate time for all files to first be synced by Cubby, and then went to one of my Windows PC’s. All the work on the small project had indeed been synced to the Windows PC and everything looked just peachy. I was delighted. Next, I returned to the Mac to work on a larger and much more important project. I had a productive session and when finished, shut it all down, again, being very careful to allow adequate time for Cubby to sync all files. Then, later today, I went to the same PC as in the prior validation and attempted to open (using the recent projects dropdown) the project I had worked on on the Mac. That is when I received the ‘Scrivener project file not found’ message. I looked in the directory where the scrivener projects are located and I see the file with a last modified date that looks correct. It is in the directory named projectxxx.scriv, it is named projectxxx and it is described as a scrivener project file. However, even when I cursor directly to it and attempt to open it with Scrivener, I get the same error message. In the mean time the smaller project that I worked on first to validate this entire process, continues to be just fine. I can open it, change it on the Mac or the Windows PC and everything is synced beautifully.
I’m at a loss and would truly appreciate any assistance you could provide.
Thanks in advance.
BTW, I’m using the latest versions of Scrivener on both the PC and the Mac.
For those of you who like a good mystery, the plot thickens! After experiencing the problem described in my post, I decided to go to a different Windows PC, (note, I sync to 3 different PC’s and the recently purchased and configured Mac) to see if the problem persisted. Amazingly, both projects were synced and opened without any problems on this second PC. At that point I decided I must have been hallucinating when I had the earlier problem, so I returned to the first PC and tried again. Exact same result as the first test. The small ‘test’ project I had used for my preliminary validation was synced and opened just fine. The second project (the true work in progress), although appearing to be properly synced via date-time-last-modified, failed again with the same error message: ‘Scrivener project file not found.’ At this point I considered visiting my favorite pub and adjusting my problem solving approach with several pints of Guinness. After this brief moment of weakness subsided I decided to be strong and give it all one more try.
I shut down all machines
Fired up the Mac and started Scrivener
Opened the second project file (the one that won’t open on the first PC)
Made a couple of small easily trackable changes
Shut down Scrivener
Allowed for sync time and visibly verified via the ‘cubby’ icon - then shut down the Mac
Went to PC #2 (the one where both project files worked fine) and started Scrivener
Just as before, both projects were synced and opened just fine
Shut down Scrivener - allowed for sync and then shut down PC #2
Went back to PC #1 (where all the trouble started)
Started Scrivener and then . . . . get ready for it: I experienced what appeared to be a technical miracle. Both projects were synced and opened just fine. At this point I decided that the Scrivener gods were heartlessly mocking me and that my earlier inclination to visit the pub was now in order.
So, in all seriousityness, if anyone has a clue, I’d be eternally grateful for an explanation. I guess the good news is that all now appears well - at least for the moment, but I can’t repress a lingering fear that this strange bug may rear its ugly head again, at an inopportune time.
Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.
BTW, all PC’s are running identically maintained versions of Windows 7 and, as noted before, the latest version of Scrivener.
I’m at a loss. Thanks in advance for any light anyone can shed on this most baffling and peculiar (at least to me) problem.
I use Cubby too and also sync among Mac and PC. I’ve seen that error a couple of times, and the cause has been a conflicting file. Have you tried looking for conflicted files yet?
On Windows, search for “conflict at” (with the quotes). You can also do a search via the Cubby Web interface. On the Mac, you have to expand the folder contents first. Apparently conflicting files do not not always propagate fully, so I suggest you to look for them on every system just to be sure.
Also, solving a conflict does not always get down to remove the file with “conflict at” on its name. Some guidelines are presented here.
Thanks much for the reply and the suggestions. I was aware that conflicts can cause problems, but I don’t think that was the case here. However, as always, I could be mistaken. There were conflicting project files in the directory with the current project file, but they were all at least 2 years old (from prior testing with different syncing products). I didn’t mention in my earlier post but one thing I did when I first experienced the problem was to clean-up all of those old conflicting files. At the time, that didn’t solve the problem. I’m still mystified by this entire process, but as I type this, I’ve made numerous changes to the project in question and it has been successfully synced (and opened for use) on all computers in the loop. So, I can only hope that whatever the problem was, I have somehow accidentally resolved it. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. If it does rear its ugly head again, I’ll update this thread.