I am done with Dropbox

[kewms]

@mattarmon

In a nutshell, it’s the same as if the file was on a network share.

Except this particular network share has gremlins yanking the wire out of the wall at random intervals.

[Randall_Lee_Reetz]

Not to introduce yet another problem in your life, but have you considered moving to the Apple ecosystem (a MacBook Pro)?

[RuffPub]

A current MacBook Air has more than enough grunt for complex tasks, so writing in Scrivener is a walk in the park for it!

I’ll be honest, as some of my more complex tasks wind down, I’m seriously considering the Air for my next laptop instead of the M series Max MacBook Pro versions I’ve been using.

[mattarmon]

I’m sorry, but that’s not the point.

The service DO NOT assume you are always connect. If you want to use “online files” feature, YOU are assuming you are always connected. If you are not, just disable that feature.

I use it because I know what I am doing, but as you said, the safest option for the majority out there is to make files “available offline”. I’m with you on that.

What I am trying to explain is that saying that OneDrive f**k up your files is just deadly wrong. If you don’t know what are you doing, yeah, YOU might screw your project.

Offline files are safest all around? Yes.
Online files sistematically delete your files? No.

I wasn’t even promoting that feature. I was just saying that I cannot stand reading in 2025 “OneDrive screw your project”.

@kewms

Our universal recommendation for all cloud services (including Dropbox) is that they should be configured so that the entire contents of the Scrivener project folder is “available offline.” If you choose to ignore that recommendation, well, it’s your data, but please make sure you have reliable backups.

THIS is the correct stuff that should be in the documentation. THIS is how you warn your customer about potential issues. It’s not about OneDrive. It’s about every cloud service. They are amazing until YOU screw up not knowing the implications of their capabilities. The problem I see is that if you (not pointing at you directly) keep saying that OneDrive is bad, Dropbox is the holy grail, people will think that Dropbox is some magic software that NEVER fails, even if YOU fail. That was my point the whole time, disguised as trying to make people understand how OneDrive works.

And suggesting to have another reliable backup is a great advice too.

I use OneDrive on a daily basis for my projects, but I have a NAS scheduled to pull my projects from OneDrive and make a static/offline backup locally. Then, because I’m paranoid, the NAS re-upload what it just backed up to Google Drive. And then, once a month or two, I make another copy to an external storage.

So yes, as you can read, I don’t fully trust OneDrive and myself either, but some stuff I read on this thread and somewhere else was just wrong.

Apologies if my wording is not clear enough, but I’m not a native english speaker.

[mattarmon]

@kewms

Except this particular network share has gremlins yanking the wire out of the wall at random intervals.

That made me laugh, thanks. I needed that.

[kewms]

Like this, maybe:

1. Be cautious with “smart” synchronization: many services will offer you the opportunity to “optimize” your local storage by storing less recently used files exclusively on the company’s server. Unfortunately, these services do not always handle Scrivener projects correctly, which can cause some of the component files in your project to appear to be missing or blank. We recommend ensuring that Scrivener projects are always available “offline.”

https://scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/cloud-syncing/using-scrivener-with-cloud-sync-services

To be clear, L&L has never said that only Dropbox is reliable. The article I linked, which describes best practices for all sync services, was first posted in 2014.

Other forum contributors have their own opinions, which they are free to share. However, only contributions from L&L staff should be considered “official.” L&L staff can be identified by an admin “shield” next to their names, and usually an avatar that incorporates the Scrivener logo.