Help me recover?

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

Hi,

Seems I accidentally deleted a chapter of my manuscript. Among trying to recover the backup, I get the message that scrivener can’t access that file or folder (I get "cannot access: "c: users/… "
Is there any way to get into it? What did I do wrong?

Alternatively, what I can get into are the hundreds of files in the files/data folder in my scrivener project folder. I can open these files and check the content, but it will take me a very long time to find the right one. Any way to search these files, or to know which file it is that I need?

Thank you!

2

If your backup is a zip file then you will need to unzip it before Scrivener can use it. On Windows, when you unzip it you will find a folder. Inside that you will find a file ending .scrivx and two folders (Files and Settings). You need to double click on the file ending .scrivx to start the project.

3

thank you!
it worked to unzip it indeed!

(only by then I had opened and closes my scrivener file so often that the five most recent backups were all of today, aargh.)

4

Also, if you ‘accidentally’ delete any of your work, it will usually go to the trash can in the binder where you can return it from whence it came.

You will be notified if you attempt to delete it from there so you shouldn’t really be able to ‘accidentally’ delete stuff unknowingly.

5

I have lost all my recent Scrivener 3 files. Recovered files contain only rtf files of recent changes. I’m on MacOs 10.15.7 and I have searched the computer for .scriv files. They only show old Scrivener 2 versions from a few years ago.
Are Scrivener files saved as .zip files because in order to clear space on my hard disk last week I deleted a lot of old zip files? Could I have deleted my Scrivener 3 files? My bin is empty and I dont have Timewotsit backup

I have also lost Scapple files…what is happening??
:cry:

6

Backups are by default saved as .zip
The live projects are .scriv

If you deleted all .zip it’s likely you deleted all your backups, but not the .scriv files.
Are you using any kind of cloud service, that you also cleaned out?

7

I’ve had a similar situation today where I decided to do some ‘housekeeping’ in my OneDrive folder that saves all of my Scrivener backups. Naively, I thought that I was safely tidying up the folder by deleting everything but the most recent backup. When I returned to Scrivener, it had NO project there. Nothing. :open_mouth: After getting over the feeling of utter nausea of losing almost 70,000 words, I logged into OneDrive website and found all the files in the Recycle bin. I’ve now restored all the files to the original OneDrive folder but now I dont’ know how to get them back to Scrivener. Do I have to start again with a new project? How do I know which files to drag over and which to leave behind? Will it bring back my lovely corkboard with all the memo notes/synopses? I feel so dumb for doing this (and a little traumatised from feeling the horror of thinking I’d lost three months’ worth of book-writing!) Hoping someone might be able to help please? Also, what else should I be doing to back up other than ‘Back Up To OneDrive’ every day? I’ve even thought about emailing myself a copy of what I’ve written at the end of every day’s writing. TIA :blush: