Hello,
I’m reaching out for help in sharing files. I’m trying to send a file to a friend for editing and clean-up, but she cannot open the file. She tried sharing hers, and it’s the same story. We are using OneDrive to share the files, and I went through the forums and tried a few different troubleshooting methods. Storing backups, sending them as zip files, but continue to get cannot access errors. Does anyone know what step we are missing? We are both on windows, if that helps.
First hopefully the actual project is not on one drive. Do you delete old project folder before extracting zip copy and opening in current project folder.
No, they are all hard copied on the computer itself. I do not delete the old file, I save a second copy and change the name to reflect the particular ‘edition’ I made. Then I zip the new copy and uploaded to OneDrive, where I then emailed the copy. When they attempt to open, it simply says ‘cannot access file name’
You could ensure that the zipped file is not corrupted by trying to unzip it on your own computer first. If the file opens fine on your end, but not for your friend, you might want to try uploading the file again and verify that the upload completed successfully
Are you sharing a Scrivener project or a single document? (The first would be the .SCRIV project folder and all its content.)
Using Scrivener (project) Backup, the default setting is to zip the backup. The backup on close is an exact copy of your saved project.
If you’re sharing a single document, use File > Sync, which creates a named RTF which you can share. Your friend can Sync the file into her project selecting the file using File Sync on her side.
Another consideration: is your friend unzipping the Zip content—a requirement on Windows. For a project you open a .SCRIVX file in .SCRIV folder.
Although not specifically a solution for the OneDrive issue, strictly speaking in terms of operational complexity and safety, you can do all of what you are describing much more safely and simply with the original project open in Scrivener, and the File ▸ Back Up ▸ Back Up To... menu command. Not only will that optionally Zip the copy of the project for you, but it will provide today’s date and time in the file name. It’s the kind of thing you can do at the end of a session, as part of closing it out.
This can be very useful when collaborating, as you might otherwise need a system for making sure the latest copy is really the latest copy. With date stamps like this, you can each use that same menu command when you are done, into the same share folder, and “stack them”, rather than deleting old ones. These previous versions can linger as long as you like, because they won’t be confused with newer copies since they have older dates. They thus serve as a fall-back in case an edit you sent didn’t get integrated on their end—you can say, ‘check Tuesday’s copy for chapter 8’ or whatever.
As to why the share folder isn’t working, I don’t know enough about OneDrive to answer that, but maybe the share permissions aren’t set right on the folder or something? The “cannot access filename” kind of sounds like a permission error.