I was using OneDrive to sync my Scrivener project between my desktop and laptop (both Win 11 pro).
Everything was working fine until this afternoon, when I tried to open the project on my desktop. There was a dialog asking me which version of the file I wanted to open. I had not seen this before from either computer. I chose the one that was the most recent, and some files needed to be recovered - which isn’t a good sign - but it appears that I didn’t lose anything.
I have now moved the files to my local desktop PC, but if I want to share them from the desktop to the laptop, I run into problems.
Closing Scrivener on the desktop, I fire up the laptop, and try to open the file on the desktop from the shared Scrivener folder on the desktop. Nope; it won’t open. I get a dialog telling me Scrivener cannot access the file at the location. There are no details, except the pathname I have attempted to open the file from.
So, my only option is to copy the entire project folder from the desktop onto the laptop. I can then open the project in Scrivener, but now I must manually copy/replace the old file on the desktop.
I read here that Scrivener works with Drop Box. But I don’t have a sub to Drop Box; I have OneDrive free with MS 365.
To avoid this nightmare in the future, I am considering installing a NAS on my local network, but if I am going to have the same problems trying to open the file from the NAS as I do from a cloud drive, then there’s no point. And, if I use a NAS on my local network, I won’t have access to the files when I’m away from home with the laptop.
Is it worth the extra $$ to buy a subscription to Drop Box?
Dropbox standard free tier will store MANY Scrivener projects before you run out of space. If you have friends and you send them an invite to DB they take up, you get extra free storage. Because I was an early adopter of DB and introduced a number of friends, I have 8GB of free space.
I would recommend digging further into why you had the issue with One Drive. It should work.
The most common cause of this sort of error is incorrect “smart” synchronization options, where all or part of the project is stored exclusively on the service’s “cloud” server.
“Conflicts” most often result when the project is inadvertently opened on system B before changes from system A have fully synchronized.
Either of these issues can happen with any service, including Dropbox.
Other than dropbox, I backup my projects as zip files. Thus all the data is in one locked file and unlikely to be corrupted. Unzipping when changing location takes a little time, but in over 4 years have never had a problem. Also consider for active projects also backing up to a thumb drive as additional backup option. A 32 gig thumb drive is cheap. When writing/editing, I back up to the thumb drive every day for added safety. A little extra time prevents heartache.
Thanks guys;
I’ll check my sync settings with OneDrive, and start zipping files. It should take less time to sync the smaller zip files as well.
I like the idea of the USB thumb drive (I have several of them). I use it for other backups.
I also have a 256GB USB SSD which I use for backups, but sometimes I forget to do the backup.