I just saw years of work flash before my eyes when I tried to open a scrivener file and I got an alert saying the app does not support the latest validation requirements. Long story short, I WAS able to open them, but I’m realizing that only backing up scrivener files means they’re gone if I ever lose the ability to open them with scrivener.
So my question is this: How can I make a backup of everything contained in scrivener, all the binder info and the manuscript, in a non-scrivener file (like a .doc for instance) in case I’m in a situation wherein I can’t open it with scrivener?
No need to repeat backup guidance here. See Section 5.2 of the Scrivener Manual for full details of the Scrivener automatic (but you have to setup) backups, and since you are using macOS, the full system Time Machine backups.
FYI, I have my Scrivener-created backups set to be created on project close, keep 25 copies, store as “zip” files to ~/backups/scrivener, and use date in file names.
Once setup do a restore of backups (from the Scrivener backups and the Time Machine-created backups) so that you know the backups are being created and that you can restore.
Also consider a 3-2-1 backup strategy. Detail for that published all over the Inter-web thing.
To backup your projects in a non-Scrivener format, consider the File → Export → Files and Folders command.
It’s also possible (though admittedly tedious) to extract the contents of a project without using Scrivener. All of the component files are either RTF or XML. (Except for research files imported in their native formats.)