I didn’t even really realize I was still running version 1.9.16.0 until recently, but I am. I just bought a new computer, so am working on getting everything ready to move over, and I was hoping someone here might have suggestions on how best to upgrade to version 3 in the process.
Upgrade to version 3 on the old retiring computer first?
Upgrade to version 3 on the new computer? (I’m not sure how involved the conversion process for the old Scrivener files on the old computer would be this way, or if it’s even possibly this way.)
Backup up the old projects as zip backups. Install Scriv 3 on new computer. Copy backups to new computer, extract and open old file and will convert to new computer. I also suggest looking up L&L help articles about upgrade. Do not delete the old computer files till happy with transition.
Whether to upgrade here or there, that’s a matter of preference. Although if you do intend to keep the old one around a while, maybe as a back up, it might be a good idea to have both computers on the same page, so to speak. Upgrading projects makes it so they won’t open in the old version, and while there is a command to export a v3 project back to v1, it’s not something you’d want to do all the time.
That aside, the best way to find out is to dive in with the demo. There are instructions for running both versions at once, so you can play with the new version while still using the old one for day to day writing.
Also check out the upgrade tutorial. It walks you through upgrading a v1 project (the tutorial itself), and introduces some of the new features and what has changed. Appendix E in the user manual is also a good one to keep bookmarked.
Just FYI, more people seem to have problems with migrating their projects to a new device than with the upgrade. If all your projects make it intact to the new PC, the upgrade should be trivial. @GoalieDad’s suggestion for migrating is the way I’d do it.
(Many of the differences between v1 & v3 are cosmetic. The major technical changes are to the compile feature–it’s improved, but assume there will be a learning curve so you’ll be patient with yourself. The most useful new features to me are Quick Reference windows and Copyholders. Those were real game changers. I couldn’t live without them now. Once you feel like you’ve acclimated to v3’s look and feel, be sure to try those out.)
As you migrate then upgrade each project, be sure to open it and check as thoroughly as you can that all your documents are there and intact with all of their words.
If it’s at all possible for you to keep the old PC around, do so. If three months from now one of your projects doesn’t look quite right, you’ll find it super helpful to be able to fire up the old PC and check the old project.
Hi, I upgraded to version 3 in a new laptop too. Everything went smooth, but I lost all my comments and footnotes. Scrivener converted every comment note to link, but they take me nowhere. I still have the old version and exported the comments and I´m currently copying each one from a Word file to the Scrivener file, but if there is a faster way to recover my comments I´ll be very grateful.
I’ve upgraded projects in the past and didn’t lose the comments, but that was a long while ago. As an experiment then, I just took a V3 project with lots of comments and exported it to V1.
Opening the downgraded project in V1 displayed the comments fine, so I upgraded that project to V3 again, and again had good results–comments upgraded along with everything else.
I do wonder if your comments data actually got lost during the migration process and not during the upgrade. Unfortunately though, I have no clue where Scrivener projects store comments data. I tried searching for it in the project folder of a project with comments, but could not find it! So I’m stumped.
Perhaps someone will come along who has some suggestions for you and/or knows where Scriv stores comments in the project folder.
Before you spend too much time trying to repair this, I suggest you report it to L&L support and see if they can help you.
Yeah, comments and footnotes definitely should be upgrading correctly. If you’ve got a repeatable case where they do not, we’d be happy to take a look at the original v1 project backup, so it can be tested. Email us a copy at tech support.
As for where they are stored, this is a bit technical, but in v3 they are stored in the same folder alongside the RTF file that stores the text that references them, as “content.comments”. This is an XML file that contains the unique link addresses you have identified as being broken links. If Scrivener cannot load that file for some reason, or if it does not exist, then you’ll get an error dialogue about the link.
Antivirus issues come to mind. Perhaps something is blocking Scrivener from loading that particular file, but not the RTF file that displays the text, for example.
Awesome, @AmberV, now I know where .comments are stored!
@Winston, it would be useful to know whether your .comments files made it into your V3 project.
On your new PC, using Windows Explorer, open a project folder (YourProjectName.scriv) for a project that you know should have comments. Drill down to the Files > Data folder. It will look something like this:
Could it be Windows Defender? It always gives me grief. I´d love to get rid of it and get an external antivirus.
I´ll try tomorrow with another file. I uploaded to Google Drive and then downloaded to the new computer. I´ve read the tutorials about cloud storage and Google Drive is not recommended, after the fact. Maybe there was a problem there. I´ll try just changing the external drive from the old computer to the new and use an old file.
Thank you
It could be Defender, and you could always try turning your WiFi off, and then disabling it, and try launching Scrivener and loading the project to see if it works better. If it doesn’t all of the above on how to look for these comment files would be a valuable next step.
I’m not an expert at Defender configuration, if it does turn out to be an issue, you may have to look up how to add Scrivener to its “okay” list, however that works. I only use Windows in a virtual machine on my Linux system, and it remains 100% severed from the outside world. So I’ve never bothered with antivirus stuff.
I can say that I haven’t heard any better from other third-party antivirus either. In fact I usually hear the opposite, that Defender is better than most, and that most antivirus programs are worse than any virus you might get.
But anyway, that symptom, of some things loading and other things not loading, is pretty common of antivirus issues. A program gets flagged, and it can’t load its own files, so you have to figure out how to un-flag it.
Google Drive can cause exactly this behavior, as it may “helpfully” change the extensions of the comments files to .XML, which breaks the links to them in Scrivener.
If you still have access to working projects on the original computer, the easiest fix is to transfer them by some other method.
The good old copy-paste worked like magic. I copied the project from my external drive to the laptop and all the comments were where they should be when I opened the file. Low-tech forever. Thank you all for your help.
Thank you all for your help.