I am a brand new user, I haven’t imported anything or even written anything. As soon as I click on the Scrivener icon and create a project I get that message about the file being in use by another application. If I click OK it takes me to another message asking if I want to save the doc under roaming - microsoft -template. It asks me this every single time I want to exit as well.
I’m really keen to get going with Scrivener but I am concerned about what is happening with my docs. Do I just ignore it and keep clicking through these windows every time (very annoying).
I have trawled the forums but there are no answers that solve it, just that it will addressed in the next update. Does anyone know when this is?
I believe the next release version is planned for late May or early June.
I’m a little confused, though, as your description of the problem is a little different from what other users have reported. Can you include a screenshot with the message you’re seeing?
The error messages are caused by a background check* for Word that is done by the third party tool Scrivener typically uses for importing and exporting .doc and .docx files. To confirm what Word libraries are available to use for the conversion, the tool launches Word in the background and should then immediately close it, so you’d never see this, but in some cases Word doesn’t get shut down properly and it then may throw the message about the normal.dot(m) template (that is, the base MS template for a Word document) being in use, etc. This is just because there’s a hidden instance of Word running, due to the check, so it doesn’t affect your actual project at all–those documents have nothing to do with the template and still work and save normally.
Just to reiterate what Katherine said, this issue has been addressed for the next update by allowing you to set in the options whether or not Scrivener should attempt to use the Word libraries. By default Scrivener will now just use its own importer/exporter, which is most cases will do everything you need. With this, there’s no check for Word, so you won’t end up in that crazy “save normal.dot?” loop. (I’ve seen that and I agree, it’s very annoying–the pop-ups seem never-ending. You may want to try the beta as Katherine suggested to avoid this if you’re getting it consistently. Just make sure you backup regularly!)
Just think of it like a little intelligence agency inside your writing program…