I have Scrivener 3 on my iMac, and I want to export a file to Scrivener 2 and have it open in Scrivener 2 (2.5, specifically). I have tried to import it as a Scrivener 2 document and open it on a system running 2.5 and I am getting this error:
Scrivener requres updating to open this project
This is the first time I have attempted such a thing.
Is it something to do with the operating system? I am running Mojave (Mac OS 10.14) on the system running Scrivener 3, and I am trying to export it to a system running Tiger (Mac OS 10.4), which is on Scrivener 2.5 (the latest updated version for it).
Am I doing something wrong when I am exporting it to a Scrivener 2 document?
Scrivener’s file format changed in version 2.7, updated to be compatible with the iOS version that was then coming out, and this is the format that Scrivener 3 exports. That means you’ll need to be running at least 2.7 to work with the exported file, and unfortunately that version’s OS support doesn’t go back as far as 10.4.
If your goal is to be able to work on the project from the older machine in addition to (rather than instead of) the Mojave system, take a look at Scrivener’s external folder sync feature, explained in section 14.3 of Scrivener 3’s user manual. That would let you export text documents from the project to be edited in another application—so in this case, a text editor or word processor on the Tiger machine—then synced back to the project. New documents can be created outside of Scrivener and imported into the project through this method as well.
Ah, I didnt know that. I thought that it extended to the whole of Scrivener 2. I assumed that it did since it never specified that it was version 2.7 or newer it exported to. I think 2.7 is 10.9 and upwards isn’t it? I have another machine that runs 10.9+ that I can use.
Yeah, I was only looking to work on it on the old iBook running 10.4 because I was using that machine to type out the document because it was better for typing Word documents on, due to the design and the keyboard.
But I never knew about the sync feature, it sounds like a good idea that I might check out. I think that I can do it in text editor, that’s probably easier than using the Word on that machine. I will look up the manual. That would probably work fine for me.
With 10.9, you can download and run Scrivener 2.9, which is that same newer file format and compatible with Scrivener 3’s export option. You can get it from our legacy downloads page. And yes, with 2.7 already being a couple of years old by the time 3.0 came out, that limitation on the file format version never made it into the manual. I’m not sure it’s ever come up before, but you’ve called it to our attention now!
Thank you very much for your help and direction. I will check it out and download it onto another machine. I have an older system running 10.9+ and I think it would work for it.
Yeah, what I was looking for was pretty obscure (it seems like most people tend to run newer versions of Mac OS, like 11+ because most people are making the switch to the M series processor chips, which is understandable because they are very efficient, apparently), and those machines would be running Scrivener 3.
