help , my document suddenly disappeared in its entirety. I clicked, in the editing screen, nothing. I tried “open” and “open recent” nothing.
I went to the backup zip file and extracted, nothing. It’s all blank where the entire novel used to be.
Help!!
We need to know if the project is saved on Dropbox, one drive, or other cloud software. When made zip backup was it done when you closed the project or did the program close automatically. Are you set up to backup on close?
Thanks, Scrivener was open, I had actually two documents open in different scrivener windows. One disappeared, the other was fine. Scrivener was not closed for either. I just clicked from a different window where I was doing something else on the computer to the document screen and saw it went blank.
I had both automatic and manual backup as options and last night I had clicked “back up now” to the place that Scrivener typically backs up to. I did not have it automatically backing up to Dropbox at that time. It looks like a zip file was made.
I saw on line I should extract (unzip) the scriv zip file. I did try that and got nothing either.
(I have a docx compiled backup from a day ago that I loaded up so I could keep working, which means I’ve lost a day’s worth of edits. But I still would like to have an understanding of why the scriv doc disappeared and why the scriv backup did not work either.) thx
Is your scrivener project folder on Dropbox or other sync folder. If so is the sync folder set to keep a local copy on your computer?
Thanks here’s the saving:
a) scrivener backup now which goes to the back file on the local machine that scrivener sets up.
b) I also “save as” to a drop box app folder on my machine that sync’s to the main dropbox online. I know to let it fully save and sync before doing anything else.
c) I compile as a Word docx and save to my machine AND email it to my gmail.
It seems this should be enough saving. But if I’m working throughout the day I was hoping the occasional scrivener back up now would be sufficient. This not appearing has given me the heebie jeebies. – and to add I hope we can figure out why that happened in the first place. 
Please don’t do this. “Save As” creates a new copy of the project and continues working in the new project. It’s a very common cause of “lost” work. If you Save As “March8version.scriv” and then open up “MyProject.scriv,” any work that you did in March8version will be missing.
If you want to create extra copies for backup purposes, use the File → Backup → Backup To command instead.
As for what happened in this particular case, the first thing I would do is check settings for both iCloud and Dropbox. There have been a few situations where iCloud “helpfully” “optimized” a project right out from under Dropbox’s nose. And then Dropbox duly propagated the “deletion” up to their server.
Thanks very much. However, when this happened, nothing scrivener was with Dropbox yet. No icloud as this is a PC. The scrivener text was only saved via scrivener backup (and my complied word doc copy saved on the machine and emailed to myself.) So this still doesn’t answer why on the scrivener text edit page the entire document simply disappeared. And I’m still wondering.
Now, I may have “extracted” tried to unzip the backup scriv file in the incorrect way. I saw in the handbook one should copy it first and double click on it to open it. I did something a little different. So that part may have been my error.
On a PC, I’d definitely look askance at OneDrive, which has many of the same “quirks” as iCloud.
I just figured out it seems to be OneDrive and then saw your post. Now I know and am disabling it. thanks.
What could happen to all of us is that we’re sometimes distracted and inadvertently move a project or a folder of projects elsewhere.
To check if this has perhaps happened, it does no harm to search your hard drive for *.scriv in File Explorer. Once found, drag or cut and paste those complete .scriv folders to their original locations.
Caution: Do not go into the .scriv folders and move things around. If you follow such a course of action, you’ll end up with the nightmare of broken projects.