SOLVED. There’s no quicker way for me to have an epiphany than to post the question in a forum.
So, in case anyone is having the same problem, I found the solution in the manual’s Appendix F, pp. 329-330. The project doc ID (the number you see in Windows Explorer) can be cross-matched by opening the scrivx file (I made a copy first and saved it elsewhere, do not risk your project file!) in an html/xml editor and searching for the document’s title, then finding that number in Explorer. Ridiculously simple. And, when I went into Dropbox, there it was, DELETED. Which I wouldn’t have done. I would have just put it in the trash. So, I’m going to go through all my Scrivener projects and see what’s been deleted. Ugh, very, very scary. I had thought the problems with Dropbox were fixed, was I wrong? Anyway, good luck all!
I had some text disappear recently and I was able to find it in Dropbox because it was small project so that even though I had no idea which file it might be, there weren’t that many to search through. AKA, I got lucky.
I now have a blank text doc in a project, that may actually be a placeholder I haven’t put text in yet. But, since it’s been awhile since I’ve worked on this particular project I can’t be sure and having recently lost data I want to check.
Please tell me there’s a way to find out which file on the disk is associated with this particular text doc. I’ve searched the manual and forum and can’t find it and am getting a sinking feeling.
Probably something profoundly obvious that I’m missing - at least, that’s my hope.
Thanks for any help…
As far as determining the physical file out in the Windows file system that corresponds to an entry in the binder in a Scrivener project…
In the Scrivener project’s folder (folder’s name ends with .scriv), there is a project index file (normally named “project.scrivx”) that contains that information. It is in a somewhat readable XML format. Make a copy of the project.scrivx file (or better yet, of the entire project folder) elsewhere, so as to not put the project’s integrity at risk. Open the project.scrivx file in a text editor, preferably one that displays XML properly indented (I use UltraEdit, for which a time limited free evaluation can be downloaded), search for the title (text) of the binder item you are interested, determine its corresponding number, use that to find the corresponding .rtf (rich text file) file in the Scrivener project’s Windows file system projectname.scriv/files/docs sub-folder in the Windows file system. The .rtf file can be viewed with WordPad, Word or other .rtf capable word processor apps.
For more on this, do a search in the Scrivener forums using “xml scrivx”.
Given what you have described, this process may just lead you to an empty .rtf file.
In that case, the alternate approach would be to use File Explorer (previously called Windows Explorer?) to search the project folder in the Windows file system for file(s) containing some string of text that you recall should have been present in the item you are looking for.
Getting such material, if you find it, back into the project via text copy/paste somehow updating/repairing the index, is something I’ll have to refer you back to the forums, manual, etc. for.
Hope that is of some assistance.
Oh, I’m such a dope, I didn’t even see your reply when I edited mine. But, all the info is there for the next person, so that’s good.
Thanks very much for taking the time to write this detailed solution!