"Files were recovered" message but nothing is missing? Wondering what problem is

[isabellet95]

Hi all, wondering if anyone else has ever received an error message like this one:

I got it when I opened Scrivener the other day. It’s worrying because I have no idea what it means and some “permissions conflict” seems like it could be bad in the future if I don’t resolve it. Two text files appeared in the Recovered folder at the bottom of the binder, but they were just old versions of text files I had updated-- two old versions of a file labeled “Chapter 1” while the latest version of Chapter 1 was perfectly fine in its normal place. This is what it looks like in Scrivener:

Any ideas? I’d love some help here because I’m worried that, though I’m fine for now, there’s some underlying issue that I need to resolve.

Other possibly relevant information:

I’ve got the project saved in Dropbox and backing up to my desktop. Though I had originally planned to use this method to collaborate with a colleague, we got skittish after some initial difficulties with syncing and backing up appropriately so no one else has accessed it via Dropbox-- it’s not shared with anyone and I only ever open it from the Dropbox folder in Finder.

I recently realized I didn’t need to buy Dropbox for Business so after the trial period I reverted to a free personal account

Thanks so much for your help and please let me know if there’s any other information I can provide that might be relevant.

[KB]

First, it’s important to know that there is usually nothing to worry about when this happens - as in this case. The key here is Dropbox. Sometimes Dropbox can make “conflicted” copies of files, for instance if it is trying to sync the file but detects it is also being saved elsewhere. This usually happens because it hasn’t finished syncing on one computer when you start editing a file on another computer. When this happens, there will be more than one file for the same document inside the Scrivener project, so Scrivener keeps the most recent version in the main binder area and then puts the older copies into a “Recovered Files” folder so that the user can check them and determine if they are needed or not.

You can usually avoid this just by making sure that Dropbox has finished syncing on one machine before closing it down or going to use Scrivener on another machine, and also making sure that Dropbox finishes syncing on the other machine before you start working on it there. It’s basically just a safety net, though.

All the best,
Keith