I was just writing in one file for about an hour on my laptop. My project is on DropBox. No problems until today when my computer froze. When I rebooted, the project came up but the current folder I was in was empty, as if I was just starting. I have Auto-Save (save after period of inactivity) set to 2 sec. I performed a “Sync Now”, resulting in no change.
Is this a feature, bug, or just my misfortune?
When saving does Scrivener close the file or keep it open?
Scrivener’s auto-save only writes changes since the last save, and with a 2-second timer that’s probably mostly going to mean changes just to the current document. So in that case, the document would still be open for writing, since you’re still editing it, and it could have been affected in the forced shutdown.
There are also a few files within the project folder that are not saved a part of auto-saving for speed reasons, but only save changes when the project is closed–these are files like the search index or UI settings, which aren’t critical and can be rebuilt; documents, synopses, and notes are all part of auto-save. It’s possible though that if the search indexes weren’t rebuilt properly when the project reopened, some documents that do have text would appear with blank icons in the binder as though they were empty.
I’m assuming from your description that it’s not simply a problem with incorrect icons but that that the text isn’t loading in the documents or the documents aren’t appearing in the binder. I’m not entirely clear though what exactly you are seeing, so I’d appreciate additional details. You say the folder you were working in is blank–do you mean that you have a folder which contained several subdocuments, and those documents are no longer listed in the binder? Or did the folder itself contain text which is not loading in the editor? Are you missing more documents/text than just the item you were working on?
The sync commands are only relevant if the project is set up to sync with an external folder or syncing with a mobile device, so in this case no change would be expected, unless you had since edited the project on iOS. It doesn’t indicate the state of the project on Dropbox per se, where there might be some confusion of files/file names because of the computer freeze. One thing to check for would be any “conflicted” files within the project folder itself in File Explorer. If these exist, they may be the newer copy of the file which Scrivener isn’t loading (since it isn’t using the expected naming scheme), and a bit of clean-up work in file browser will sort things out.
The Binder and folders were fine. When I rebooted, the text in the folder was empty - as if I just created the folder to start writing a new chapter. Would a do a better and proper save or is it similar to auto-save?
The first thing I checked was the Windows File Explorer for DropBox. Unfortunately, all the data file folders are labeled like this (“0EA7064C-20A2-458A-ABB7-A1CA2B2B0B3F”), so there is no way for me to find the proper folder unless I wanted to spend hours searching. Is there any way to change the folder labeling so it makes sense to a human?
Ioa was being literal in what you should be searching for. Use the search function in the file browser to look for files with the word ‘conflicted’ in their names within the .scriv folder and all of its sub-folders. You shouldn’t have to browse for conflicted files one folder at a time.
One other thought; do you use the File->Save As menu to create copies of your project occasionally? It’s easy to accidentally edit the copy, and then when you re-open the original later, the writing you’ve done is then seemingly gone while it’s actually in the copy.
Good luck!