Just installed Scrivener 2.0. When I tried to open my old scrivener file, I received a message that a backup would be created and a new file created. This occurred. But when I try to open the new file it says that it is in the old format and it is once again updating the file, but I don’t see anything really happening. It just continues to update. Is there a bug? The old file is 6.9 gigs. The new file is 6.3 gigs. Is the new file supposed to be smaller than the old file?
I have backups on other hard drives so I am not in a state of panic.
But I would like get work done soon. Please assist.
Thanks for a great product in 1.54, but I can’t say anything about 2.0 until it opens my project.
Hmm, I’m not sure quite what the underlying problem is but here’s what I’d do to if I was experiencing this.
Firstly, are you sure you’re giving it long enough to do the conversion? It may be that for some reason there is a file or other setting in there which it needs to spend a bit longer on. When the conversion is complete it should open up in Scrivener I think, so it it’s not getting that far perhaps it needs a bit longer.
If might be worth opening up a console (Applications/Utilities/Console) to see if you are getting any error messages or other feedback from the conversion process.
If it does open up in Scrivener 2.0, then try a ‘File -> Save As …’ to make a separate copy of it which hopefully should be in the right format.
If none of the above work, then compare the two projects by right clicking on them in the Finder and using ‘Show package contents’. It might take a little while but if you can find any clues in there as to which file may be causing the conversion to stall, you could try temporarily taking it out of the project and reconverting.
These are both guesses on my part (I’ve never had this problem) but until someone has a definitive answer, and given you have backups (yay!) it might be worth a go.
I wouldn’t expect the new file to be that much smaller than the old file, no. That is an enormous project though so we may need to troubleshoot this.
Eddy’s suggestions are good, especially with regard to checking the Console, so please let me know what the results of that are and we’ll take it from there.
I’ve also had this problem. My 666.83MB file was updating for about 3 hours until I got tired of waiting and quit. I checked out the package contents in the original and the backup…the backup was 694.9MB so obviously there’s a discrepancy there, and the main thing I noted was that the text files were no longer in a folder called “files” and inside the snapshots folder there was only a bunch of documents (as opposed to folders with documents inside them) which were all bigger than the originals.
Any ideas? It’d be nice to play with the old projects in the new version…
Would you be willing to make your 600MB project available to me (in strictest confidence) so that I can test this? We’d need to set up a shared Dropbox folder, but if this is acceptable, please drop us a line on support AT literatureandlatte DOT com and incude “(for Keith as requested on forum)” in the subject title so that Ioa knows to pass the e-mail directly on to me (as Ioa is fielding general support questions).
Thanks,
Keith
Zoinks, sadly NDAs mean my nuts would get cut off if I did share any of this (“Why didn’t you just use Word like any normal person??”) so it’s a bit of a pickle. What I am planning to do tho (as I need to do some more work on this gig this week anyway) is go back to the previous version of Scrivener,then duplicate the project, substitute text and pictures for unrelated gubbins, save it under a different name and see if it happens again. If it does, then there’ll be a splendid case study right there, and if not then I know it had something to do with the files in the original and will have to figure out another solution.
If nothing changes on this front I’ll pop back here in a day or two and divvy up the sub project for experimentation.
I had a similar experience, a conversion that was hanging. My solution was to make a new project in 1.54, drag all the contents of the one that wouldn’t convert into that, then close 1.54, open 2 and import the new file. I watched the barometer and saw that there was one file – its name came up too – which took nearly as long as the rest of the project together.
When I had it in 2, I looked at that file, and discovered that for some reason that file had got imported somehow in a format which looked like binary – it would have been a Chinese Winword .doc originally, containing mixed English and Chinese. In the end, the only thing to do was to delete that file out of the .scriv project and everything is working normally.
There were two copies of the file … one to be kept as the original, the other the edited version. I have no idea how the original version got turned into that quasi-binary format, but not the other. It had happened in 1.54, I discovered on checking earlier back-ups.
Anyway, you might like to try the same route of making a new version of the recalcitrant project and importing that, even if it takes time.
Mark
Sorry to not respond sooner, but I had to go to sleep.
The problem remains.
The “reopening” the project went on for four hours in the middle of the night.
This morning I decided to delete the project on my macbook’s hard drive and install a backup I had on another hard drive. I also deleted Scrivener 2.0 and reinstalled it.
2.0 made a backup successfully, but then got stuck at 6.34g (the original was 6.89 g) and this time it crashed. When I reopened 2.0, a automatic crash message came up which I sent to you (and Apple).
Now I am a bit worried. I am using Snow Leopard
Keith, it is a large file. I often cut and paste parts of pdf files into “notes” in my research file, thus making “index cards”. This is two years of research for my next book. I have 1.54 installed on another computer, so if worse comes to worse, I will just open up my files and covert them to rtf if I need to abandon Scrivener. I hope not.
Keith, I know this is a large file, but I’m willing to sent it to you.
I have been trying to open the old file. I’m going to try importing it… It seems to be downloading each file (7,177 total). I’ll let you know what happens. This might work. Maybe this is what I was supposed to do from the beginning?
The import seems to be stuck at 1,176 files out of 7,177.
I’m cancelling it.
Scrivener is such a wonderful tool to organize research and write a book. No other program offers the functionality to do both. Being able to import your old project is fundamental.
The fix you gave me worked. My project is all in Scrivener 2.0. Thanks for the personal attention. I wish you and the rest of the crew at Scrivener the best. You have a great product, and the customer service is superb.
Problems
-Larger projects still hang up while converting to 2.0 [460 mb - goes into force quit mode, 308 mb]
-Other random-sized projects hang up on converting [72.3, 73.3, 54.6, 59.8, 15.8 mb]
-Successfully updated projects - 4.4 mb,8.6 mb, 9.2 mb, 10.8 mb, 18.1 mb and 721 kb,
-Cannot create new project via file menu
-No start panel
-Everything slows down - sluggish when I open 2.0 (new MacBook @July 2010) When I quit Scrivener everything returns to normal
-hangs up when I close a project
-latest Scrivener infraction - will not close
Just downloaded (for the umpteenth time since 1Nov) and immediately had to do a force quit - Scrivener never appeared on menu bar
I had emptied cache, and put the earlier version into trash before I re-installed
Re: my larger projects. I confess, were created in my young Scrivener days when I didn’t know what I was doing. So I did a lot of hasty & rash dragging & dropping. Maybe the 2.0 slowdowns will be the motivation to clean up my act. Still, I wish there was an easier way.
I have created a few new projects in 2.0 using the save-as function
I was finally able to reinstall 1.54 to access all projects and nothing was lost. But if I make any changes in those projects
my 15 mb project has been updating for over an hour …
But what can I do to get all my projects into Scrivener and functioning.
And why do some of us have problems & others don’t?
I’ve been desperate for someone to send me a problematic project, as you no doubt read upthread, so would it be possible for you to send me your problematic 15MB project (zip it up, send it to our support address, and mark the subject for my attention).
The trouble is mainly that I haven’t been able to reproduce it and it’s very difficult to debug from a distance - if you can send me a project that enables me to see the problem, it will be much easier for me to fix it, and I’ll make it a priority.
Find the 1.x project in the Finder. When you went to update it, Scrivener will have made a backup, which will have the same file name as the original project but with " Backup" appended. It might also have a "1’ after it - find the one that opens in 1.x (if you’re not sure, you can download 1.54 from the “Features” subsection of the Scrivener page of the website.)
Ctrl-click on the file in the Finder and select “Compress” or “Archive”, to create a zip of it the project.
Send the zip file to support AT literatureandlatte DOT com and make sure you write “FAO Keith” somewhere in the subject line so that Ioa knows to send it straight to me.
Still, I wish there was an easier way.