gmail blocks scrivener back up files.

whenever i try to send a email of a back up file for my novel gmail, blocks it saying it could contain a virus.

should i be worried about this.?

is there anyway i can remedy this ?

is there any other method i could potentially use to back up my story file in case my computer dies or is stolen ?

a method that would preferably avoid the hassle i had to go through transferring the file from one computer to another the last time i did it.

I don’t have an answer for your gmail virus question.

As an alternative, you can get a OneDrive account, download the OneDrive app, and configure Scrivener to save your zipped backup files to the OneDrive folder. Then OneDrive will automatically save your zipped backup files up to the OneDrive cloud, allowing you to download them to other PCs.

This is what I do, and I know a number of people on this site do something similar.

A OneDrive free account will give you 5GB of storage.

But you don’t have to use OneDrive. Any cloud service will do saving your Scrivener zipped backup files.

Best,
Jim

Hello and sorry for ressurrecting this old thread,

I had the same problem today and came to the forums to see if someone else had a solution. After finding your thread I did a lot of tests (sending parts of the ZIP file Scrivener generates) to find out which part GMail was complaining about, and I was able to pinpoint the problem.

If I’m correct, you have “footnotes” (or comments) in your manuscript, right?

GMail don’t like the CONTENTS of the *.comments files. As they are text files, I was able to edit them and therefore run some tests. The problem is in this part of the files (the asterisks aren’t part of the text, they are only a separator I’m using here on the forums):



My guess is that the GMail filters think this is some type of javascript, obfuscated inside the text file. It’s not, I know, but unfortunately I don’t think that argue with Google will work. :-/

So, the good news is that we don’t have a virus (my main concern), and the bad news is that we will not be able to send Scrivener files with comments using GMail.

I have local and online backups of the projects, but even so I normally send a backup to myself through GMail just to be sure. I’ll start to use Dropbox from now on.

Regards, Andre