I’ve been using scrivener iOS since it came out, mainly on a larger iPad Pro, but also an iPad Air 2.
I have many projects in Dropbox, and hadnt synced the air for a long time as I’ve been working exclusively on the pro. Last night, when ‘upgrading’ to ios11 i thought i should sync everything up first. When i tried to do so on the air, with scrivener synced to dropbox and closed on the pro, it struggled for ages to download files, at first showing a number then failing with the message ‘sync failed’ and ‘mobile file missing’. I thought this might be because i had iOS 11 on the pro and 10 on the air, so i updated the air to 11 and tried again numerous times all with the same result although now not even showing the number of files it was trying to download.
I should add that it was a very large number of files. Eventually i deleted scrivener on the air and reinstalled and allowed it to sync with my dropbox scriv projects folder. It was successful, and about 16, 000 files (spread over a large number of projects).
When i initially went to sync the air, scrivener showed lots of the little orange icons on projects, which i think means it has detected the files have changed on dropbox and need syncing. I only use manual sync. After it failed, those icons all turned into red x’s, which i presume means something along the lines of… its all buggered… although it would be nice for a bit more clarity on what that means.
I have it ok now, as i mentioned, but i wanted to post here to perhaps contribute to bug checking and also to find out what happened and what mobile file missing meant. I tried googling that but could get no results. I only really work on it, except very occasionally, on the iOS app.
How much data is this in total? Running out of room on the Air could cause all sorts of strange behavior.
If that’s not it, I’d recommend resetting the cache on the Air and starting over. (iOS Settings App -> Scrivener -> Reset Scrivener -> Clear Dropbox Sync Cache)
Hi, thanks. Not enough to run out of room on the air, it’s only text. And when i deleted and reinstalled and synced from scratch it was fine. It ‘feels like’ i just let it get so out of sync so long ago… it went wrong. I know that’s not very logical . But isn’t the biggest clue that it gave me the reason for sync fail: “mobile file missing”… whatever that means.
Now it’s fine, I feel reluctant to tamper - thank you for the advice though. Could you tell me what clearing dropbox sync cache does - imean what effect it has? I wonder if updating iOS to 11 would have done that anyway or if it happens automatically.
Edit: I had a look and scrivener is only 250mb docs and data on my ipad
Clearing the sync cache forces Dropbox to start from scratch: instead of “remembering” which files were already in sync, it checks the whole project from the beginning. As a result, it’s a good way to clear out errors that might result from an earlier failed synchronization.
As for the underlying “mobile file missing” issue, Scrivener puts changes made on an iOS device into a separate “mobile” folder inside the project in order to facilitate conflict resolution. That folder was clearly not missing on the iPad Pro, or the project wouldn’t have worked correctly there. But either between the Pro and the Dropbox server, or between the Dropbox server and the Air, an error – most likely a random connectivity glitch – occurred that caused the folder to not transfer correctly. Mayhem ensued.
Thank you, that’s very useful to know the specifics about clearing the dropbox sync cache, I’ll probably use that in future should i let one ipad get way out of sync again. Seems similar, in effect, by accident, to what i ended up doing by reinstalling the whole thing.
And thanks for explaining the mobile file thing. I find it useful to understand the mechanics as it might help me to be abit more aware of whats going on and working with it. It’s weird it wasnt there for the iPad Air, on multiple attempts, yet was when i reinstalled. Given your description of what clearing the cache does, it sounds like the air scriv needed to be searching dropbox from scratch to locate the mobile file.
As an added thought, i wonder if having edited projects on both the iPad Pro and windows scriv and kept them synced but not the air might have been a problem.
N, that should have nothing to do with it. I sync my active projects haphazardly between three Macs and two iPads, depending on which device I am using when I get time over. I wanted to check something in one project last night, so I grabbed the iPad Air at the bedside table and synced it. I hadn’t used Scrivener on it for well over a month this time. No problem.
I’d say that a good network connection or patience while a bad connection catches up are the keys to successful syncing between devices.
