I am really hoping a technical person can help me out. I have developed a Scrivener template for outlining a novel. I saved a copy of it as a .scrivtemplate and a .scriv file in Dropbox and then posted those links to my blog so people could download it. I’m now getting all these request for technical assistance and I have no idea how to answer them. Some people seem able to open it. Some people don’t.
Can anyone here help me out by identifying what might be causing the problems, if there’s anything I can do to fix it, and/or some simple step-by-step instructions I could post on my blog to assist people to get the file open in Scrivener? You can see all the issues they’re having in the comments, although unfortunately some of them are along the lines of ‘I can’t see the file, where is it?’
The problem is most likely caused by asking users to download the .scriv file directly - a .scriv file is in fact a folder package. It looks like a single file when Scrivener is installed, but take it anywhere else and it will look like a folder. Folders don’t work well when you try to download them or provide them as direct links.
So, I would recommend that instead of providing links to the direct files, you zip up the two files into an archive and provide the .zip file for download. (To do so, you can just select both files in the Finder, Ctr-click on one of them, and select “Compress 2 Items”. This will create an Archive.zip file in the same folder. Rename it something meaningful, e.g. “MyTemplate.zip”, and upload that. Users who download it will just have to double-click on it to extract the two files - in fact most Macs will automatically expand .zip files upon download into a folder with the files inside it anyway.
If you have Windows users also downloading, they’ll typically need to right-click the .zip file and choose “Extract All” or double-click to open the .zip and drag the contents out to another location. Windows doesn’t automatically extract when you double-click but just lets you view the contents, and Scrivener won’t be able to open the project file while it’s in read-only mode.
It’s easier than that if you have Dropbox. Just right click on the link to the .scriv file and ‘copy link’. Paste the link in the browser and it will take you to a Dropbox page which provides the option to either download the file or copy it to your own Dropbox. Select copy to your Dropbox and you’ll be asked to login. After login you can place the file in your Dropbox Scrivener folder or wherever you want it. Easy enough…works fine.
Thank you everyone for your help! I will try zipping the file when I get home tonight and add some of those instructions.
This suggestion was made on the Scrivener facebook page:
[i]I found advice for you and others with this problem by doing a quick Google search.
It’s probably an .xml file extension association specific to your own computer. Do not double click on it. You need to right click and open it in TextEdit or Word or so. Do it with TextEdit. thats the best thing.
You can change this setting by:
selecting index.xml file
get info Command (Apple) + i
expand Open with: pane, click on the triangle. If it isn’t open already.
click on the popup button and select text editor of your choice (or TextEdit)
click Change All… button, it’ll prompt you for confirmation.[/i]
I’m not sure if I understand what this is supposed to do.