I couldn’t find related forum posts, if they exist.
I was editing a text file for one of my chapters when my cat jumped on the computer, hitting the reset button. I have my project set to save every 2 seconds of inactivity.
That chapter alone is now a blank page, but still reads 2786 words at the bottom. I tried CTRL-A to see if it were whited out somehow, but there doesn’t seem to be anything there. I can’t scroll down the page.
I did save a back-up to google drive, but being a noob only saved the .scriv file and not the whole folder. I’ve since made proper back-ups.
I’ve accepted I’ll have to re-write the whole thing. On the whole It was a cheap lesson on a project that’s by now 60k+ words. And they say it’s a good exercise to rewrite something without looking at the original. However, my day would be brighter if there is a way to recover it and/or understand how the error occurred.
Hi @wrenwoad, Hopefully you find your missing words.
You should know that this scenario was possibly avoidable, with a proper backup strategy.
When you have a few minutes, read this post I wrote a while back on Scriv backups. It was for Scriv v1, so the menu options have changed, but the settings are all the same. It explains my strategy and how you can avoid this issue recurring, without having to get rid of your cat. (Hint: set ‘Back up with each manual save’ = yes, then press Ctl-S periodically during long writing sessions to do a project backup.
This is what should be focused on.
The answer/solution will come from that.
If not too late already, do not quit your project / Scrivener.
Set up backup in the options, and do a backup while we think…
If you did quit your project already, though, can you confirm your document still displays a word count at the bottom?
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Do you have two header bars to your editor?
If so, that could be a copy-holder, set at the top, taking the whole place. (Hiding the real editor, while still displaying a word count at the bottom.)
You can close it with the “X” at the top right if that’s the case.
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Stupid question: have you tried Ctrl-Z a few times?
(That won’t do anything if you’ve quit the project since, though. – Or if one of the above is your issue.) Keep that for last, else you might just make things worse. (Or hit Ctrl-Y a few times afterwards, if undo (ctrl-z) does nothing.)
Technically, if ctrl-z (undo) is to do anything, the word count should have been affected, though.
Of course, I had to misread that bit up until now.
(I thought the cat randomly ran across your keyboard.)
. . . . . . .
But still…
In my test project I went and deliberately deleted the file associated to a document.
Upon reopening the project, all content was gone. (Nothing unexpected.)
Except that the word count now displays 0.
I can’t think of a single reason/way the file could be gone and still a wordcount would display in the editor. If there is nothing in the editor, it should say “0”.
I would say the file is there. Just not visible.
One thing to try:
In the “blank” document, click in the editor, hit ctrl-A, then ctrl-C, create a new document, click in the editor, then hit Ctrl-Shft-V (Edit / Paste and Match Style)
What about going into your SCRIV project folder with File Explorer, then the sub-folders, sorting by date modified.
Open the latest RTF files till you find a semblance of what you were working on.
Thanks for all the feedback. Unfortunately it wasn’t a zoom issue, yes I tried ctrl+z and searching phrases I recalled from the chapter. As I said I’ve made proper backups following this issue, setting up periodic snapshots, saving to multiple files and copy-pasting to another project folder in g-docs as opposed to sending the whole file there.
When I typed another word into that chapter it reverted to a 1 word count, so as far as I can tell it’s gone. My best guess is I was pressing backspace or delete when my cat hit reset in a perfect storm of stupid scenario.
Have you tried a date search mdate:>1d (or vary number of days to show any recently modified files in the project in case the words were misplaced.)? [my bad sorry I missed that above in reading as already suggested.]
Seeing what you consider to be “proper backup” (I disagree, by the way, just saying on the fly – but that’s not the point), have you checked in the options if by any chance you would unknowingly have automatic backups turned on, and by providential luck would happen to have indeed a backup of your catified document? …
Go to options, backups, and click “Open backup folder”.
See if there are any files with your project’s name.
If so, before you do anything else (including to quit Scrivener), secure those by copy/pasting them (a clone) to a different location.
Let us know if there was anything in the backup folder. If you don’t know what to then do with those backups, we’ll continue from that point.
(Hint: set ‘Back up with each manual save’ = yes, then press Ctl-S periodically during long writing sessions to do a project backup.
