Hello. I am working at my office for the first time this week. I had scrivener on my office macbook. It was easy enough to open the file, as both the office and home mac share the same Desktop folder for Scrivener. I changed the date on the file to what you see below.
I saved it on the mac (assuming it would share the file with the home desktop) and also backed it up to dropbox, which is the default folders for both.
I got home tonight, and I got “could not open” file below. What was wrong and how should I back up or save my file on my office macbook. Should I buy a thumb drive?
2021 Cozy Mystery 7_8_21.scrivx" is the main structure file for a project, but other required files for this project could not be found: the /Files/Data and /Settings folders are missing.
I should clarify I spent four hours adding new information to this file, 7_8_21, which is different than the working file of 7_7_21. Advice on how to solve this current situation, and how to correctly date or identify files for easy transfer in the future is appreciated.
Is the Dropbox software installed and running on both computers?
The .scrivx file is the master index used to build the Binder. If you have that, but not the .scriv folder in which it resides (or the subfolders that contain your actual work), then something went wrong in the transfer between systems. Probably the project on the office computer is still fine.
Check Dropbox installed on both computers. Set the save location on both Scrivener programs to the local Dropbox folder and your don’t need to date files or any other fancy crap etc. Just make certain you close the project when you walk away from each system.
After closing on one system, when you start the other Dropbox will update and the file will be there.
If you are going to use Dropbox to sync between the two computers don’t backup to Dropbox - backups should never be on the same location as live projects. Back up to iCloud, OneDrive, Synch, PCloud etc. Free accounts should be more than enough for plenty of backups. Set for Scrivener to make as may backups as you have space for. I set mine at 25.
Thank you to everyone who responded. I didn’t phrase the question correctly - apologies. But I managed to temporarily solve the problem. I returned to the office, and when I saved as a “zip” file I was able to “see it” in my Dropbox then download it …
… but to avoid future emergencies, given that I will be using Scrivener to work on a given project both in my office on my MacBook Air, then again at home, what is the SOP?
Buy a thumb drive and use it (or at least have this as a backup )
Give the file a date/code (this can create too many files …
I have been told to always make sure the project is closed on one computer before opening it on another. Again, my automatic backup goes to dropbox (but I also have google drive and amazon drive)
Thanks RuffPub. To save space on my computers, I have the Dropbox on the cloud … I may see if I can just this one Scrivener folder local. But what do you think about using a thumb drive? Today when I checked my file I saw it was not backed up as a zip … that was the problem as the warning said my project was missing a file. In any event, the problem was solved when I saved it as zip, and was able to download it from dropbox to my home computer.
A warm thank you for always being here with great advice!
The idea with dropbox is that you have the app installed and save your projects to the local Dropbox folder.
If you are using Dropbox solely as a backup location then guess that wouldn’t be an issue, but you should never open a Scrivener project directly from any cloud location - asking for trouble.
Thumb drives generally not recommended, however there are several threads on here specific to that scenario.