Help with syncing between MAC and Windows via Dropbox

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I am having one heck of a time! Because I use them in different ways, I actually have 3 computers with Scrivener.

  1. Win 7 Home older Asus PC
  2. Win 8 Yoga PC
  3. Macbook Air mid-2011 I think this one is “Lion”?

I have one Dropbox folder to hold the Scrivener files I am currently working on.

I very carefully save and then close the projects and then am sure that I even close Scrivener.
I very carefully wait until Dropbox is entirely synced.

When I try to open the file I have just worked on, I get the error that the file is open somewhere.

I have tried this with even entirely shutting down all the computers and then starting them up again and nothing helps.

The Asus is my DTR at home computer. The Yoga is my more portable PC but 14" so larger than the Air and the MB Air is 11" and is my super portable. it is very tiny and somewhat difficult for me to see and manipulate, but is wonderfully light and easy to take with me.

When I have shut everything down, and thoroughly synced Dropbox, I have tried going ahead and trying to load the file anyway, but it will not load. It just does nothing, or throws me back to the Scrivener screen.

So, like just now. I had been on the Yoga, made some changes and additions, saved the file, backed it up, let Dropbox sync, shut everything down, then went to the Air, allowed Dropbox to fully sync, entered Scrivener and tried to open the file, and it is telling me that it is still open somewhere!

I am really pretty sure that it isn’t, and there is SOME glitch where one of the computers is not shutting Scrivener down properly. I did upgrade to the latest versions of both the Windows and the MAC versions.

I am tearing my hair out over this. Can anybody PLEASE help???

Thanks in advance.

Pam

EDIT: I was able to open a Windows file on the Mac but neither one of my Windows computers will open the file once it has been opened on the Mac. There is supposed to be fully compatibility, so I am still don’t know what is going wrong! It seems to me that in the past, I did get it to work once or twice, but not recently.