Getting really scary error and can't figure out how to fix it

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

Everything has been working just fine until suddenly I couldn’t type into my document. I got an error similar to this:

Could not load document “Untitled”

RTF Reader failed loading document file: ‘G:/My Drive/Novel/Nature of Royalty2.scriv/Files/Data/C8E2A7D0-67F4-4716-8767-32B565B2AB1B/content.rtf’

Error: Unmatched ‘{’ in Rich Text file. RTF file position: 2233

I have tried following the directions that came with it, but I’m unable to find the file it wants me to find. Also, every time I try, it gives me a new folder to look into. (i.e. a different strand of letters and numbers. Please help. Some of my text is now going wonky as well.

The directions given:

If this is the first time you have received this message, please restart Windows, then restart Scrivener and try opening this project again.

If you receive this message again for the same file, back up your project, then use File Explorer to copy the file from your Scrivener project at the path above to a safe location and delete the file from the project folder. You can then try opening the copied file in another program and copying and pasting the contents into a new document in your Scrivener project. If this message recurs after doing so, delete the document from the Scrivener project, then paste first into Notepad to strip all formatting and RTF tags and copy and paste from there to Scrivener.

To prevent losing work, you will not be able to modify or save the affected file in Scrivener until you restart.

Please help! This document has about 40,000 words in it!

2

You shouldn’t have the project folder on a cloud drive. Zip backups are fine. Your projects should be on the C drive or another hard drive/ ssd on the device. Your issue may be due to sync issues. I would suggest you change where your open scrivener projects are kept.

3

I’ll keep that in mind going forward, but I’ve had these files on Google for years without issue. Also, all my other projects are working fine. How does one work on a project from two different computers if the project is not on a cloud drive? I would have sworn I asked this ages ago and was told it would work.

I did manage to copy all the data from the bad project to a new project via copy-paste each file individually, so I think I have all my data in another project now, but it has taken two hours.

4

You might find this advisory useful: https://scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/cloud-syncing/google-drive-advisory.
L&L do provide really good advice on how to share projects using cloud drives-however Google Drive does seem to have the worst reputation. I stopped using Google Drive many years ago after reading about some bad experiences.
Using a different location for backups (preferably zipped) is very important, as GoalieDad notes.

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5

A number of people said that during discussion on using Google for syncing, but the L&L advice always was that sooner or later Google would bite. Lost count of the number of people whose projects have been ‘Googled’. That said, if it is only PC/PC, PC/MAC even Google should in theory be okay now with changes in Google Drive since KB’s post, though I’m not about to risk it. (iOS is the one that can only work with Dropbox at present) but the advice below must be followed. (Personally, I still keep everything other than zipped backups off Google for both the risk of issues and their woeful privacy policy.)

L&L advice has always been that live projects should never be opened from a cloud service and that whenever using one files/folders should be set to whatever that services ‘offline’ mode is called. Some services confuse things by calling their online mode something like optimize storage (move as much off your local drive as it can)

To share between computers, you have the project in a local folder for the cloud app on each computer and set up the cloud service to sync those folders.

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6

Please don’t. I helped someone who had been bitten by the “helpful” XML extensions very recently.

7

Okay. Word was recent changes had fixed. Good to know ‘word is’ was wrong again.

8

I don’t know if the project in question had been previously mangled and the user only just discovered the issue. I do know that I wouldn’t trust GDrive with my own projects.

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9

Problem definitely just happened today. I’ve been working on the project for days without trouble.

10

Perhaps at this juncture, best to go to your recent automatic Scrivener backup which I do hope you have. And get the entire project safely off Google Drive. That might be tricky if your backup not available to use.

Scivener didn’t change anything “today”, but Google might have. :wink:

Do you really have 40k words in one Scrivener “document”? 40k in an entire project absolutely no problem, but if in one document, that’s risky.

11

40,000 words in the project, not a single document. Sorry, I’m not good on the official terms.

There was no backup. It keeps the five most recent backups, and it overwrote all 5 good backups with bad backups.

LUCKILY I was able to figure out which 2 documents were the problem in the old project. Then I copied every other document to a new project. Then I copy and pasted the text from the two bad documents into new documents in the new project. So I think I have all of it now (the word count is the same.) But it took about 3 hours to figure out how to do it, actually do it, and verify that I did, indeed, do it.

12

Glad you are back. Obviously please add more backups to the count and make them zip files. And consider implementing a system backup.

13

honestly, I have no idea how to do a system backup anymore. The computer only wants to backup to OneDrive, and OneDrive will only back up things in specific folders like “Documents” and “Downloads.” I can’t tell it to backup my GoogleDrive. Any suggestions?

14

Others can comment or you may find good articles on the internet. It has been decades since I used Windows so out of touch.

For now, IMHO at minimum put your Scrivener project in your home Documents/scrivener and zip backups in Documents/backups/scrivener and rely for the time being what you say above for a minimal backup.

But I am on record to say using sync services for backup not good enough.

But you may value a routine full system backup for if and when the machine crashes. It happens.

15

thank you everyone. I will be looking into changes for backups.

16

Here is where you change your backups, i prefer compressed backups for safety.

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Now to see where your project folders are click File > Show Project in File Explorer. If on one drive it is easy to change.

  1. Create a new folder "Scrivener Projects (or any name)
  2. Do backups for every Scrivener Project you have. (Now Close Scrivener)
  3. Copy your current Scrivener Project Folder and paste to the Desktop as backup.
  4. Delete your current Scrivener Project Folder.
  5. Take the zip backups and extract them to the new “Scrivener Project Folder” on one of your computer hard drives. Do this for the most recent backup of every project.
    Now you have a new project backup location for the Project folders.
    Close Scrivener.
    Open Scrivener and click File > Open and use File Explorer to go to the new “Scrivener Project Folder” and open the .scrivx file for every project there.
    Now you have changed the default location for your Project Folders.
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