I lost about a week’s worth of work. We tried everything (my husband is a software dev–I asked for his help with the digital forensics). I had him hunting for the chapter I’d been working on (the .rtf file was corrupt, no text anymore), but then today I realized a lot of the rearranging I’d done last week was gone too…whole sections were back where they’d been deleted. I started thinking maybe I just hadn’t saved the project correctly. But when I started adding new text files to the folders just now, some of that old info started filling the blank cards in… (Trust me, I’ve now added new cards everywhere, hoping for more magic, but I’ve probably gotten about half of it back. And definitely not the chapter I’d spent the most time on.) Can anyone tell me what’s going on? Is there still a way to get what I’ve written back? And what do you do when a Scrivener project goes completely bonkers like this? Start a new one and hope for a better result? Call a priest?
(This started after my computer shut down incorrectly and I was working in Scrivener)
It sounds like your project got corrupted when the PC crashed. There is a sort of master file that defines the binder, and if that was corrupted then your project’s binder won’t look right. But most of your writing should still be in the rtf docs.
What will save you are the zipped project backups that Scrivener makes when you close your project.
The backup folder location is specified under preferences. If you find backups that were made before the crash, copy them to another folder, then open each and determine which is the best version to use going forward.
If your backups aren’t helpful, then if I were you I’d try to find the rtf docs with my writing and copy them into a new, empty project.
Thanks very much, Jim. Backups didn’t save me…bizarrely, the last one available was from January. Again, I appreciate your response - I haven’t received a response to my email to tech support.
By default, Scrivener is configured to take a backup when you close your project. Have you left your project open since January? (I’ve met folks here who never close their projects.) Or is there any chance you changed the default backup config?
It is worth searching your hard drive for zip files, in case you had inadvertently moved the backups out of the backup folder to a different location . (Do any PC cleaning lately?) That’s probably a long shot, but if finding a recent backup would really help you.
I did always leave it running…now definitely realizing my mistake. My computer would shut itself down for updates, etc, fairly often and close the program, though. Guessing when that happens it doesn’t create backups?
I didn’ t change the backup config…since the day I lost files I’ve been experimenting with it, and there are new backups in the same folder.
Thanks again…I’ve given up at this point on what I lost but am working on a better way to save files (beyond Scrivener) so that it doesn’t happen again.
No, every time that happened Scrivener probably crashed! Not a good thing.
So sorry to hear you lost words. When people lose work it makes me crazy, so here are my unsolicited recommendations on what your Scrivener Backup Options should be:
Back up on project close = yes
Compress as zip files = yes
Use date in name = yes
Only keep n most recent backups" = 25. I think the default is 5. Changing it to 25 will take up more space on your hard drive, but it’s worth it. What typically happens is when you have an issue with a Scrivener project, for example your project gets corrupted for some reason, you open and close the project many times trying to figure out what’s wrong, and each time you do that you overlay a good backup with a bad one. By the time you realize you have to restore from backup, you may not have any good ones left! Unfortunately, we see that sort of thing all the time on these boards. (I have changed my own setting to “Keep all backup files”, as I’d rather manage the backups and clean them up myself.)
Backup location = Wherever you like, just not in the same folder as where you store your projects. (I store my zipped backups on OneDrive, so there is a copy automatically off my hard drive. This is a common practice among Scrivener folks.)
I strongly recommend that you read the following sections of the Windows Scrivener manual, or convince your techie husband to do so. These are only a few pages and well worth it!
6.11 Backing up your work
Appendix B.9 Backup options
And you get extra credit if you (or he) have a look at Appendix G Project Bundle Format!
In addition to the Scrivener-specific setting above, regularly backup all the data on your PC to some sort of external device. Could be a USB drive, or a cloud service. Doesn’t matter, as long as you’ve got some recourse if your PC’s hard drive crashes.
These are only a few pages and well worth it!