Hi. I just switched to a Mac and so switched from Scrivener for PC to Scrivener for Mac. One of my projects contains Scrivener links and they seem to have gotten messed up in the transition. There is a link where it is supposed to be, but when I click on it an error pops up saying “There is no application set to open the URL 596” (with different numbers for each). The real links are there too elsewhere on the page, underlining things that aren’t supposed to be linked. How do I get the links to go back to the right place? Thanks!
How did you transfer the project between platforms?
Katherine
I copied all my files to a server and then to my new computer.
Do you still have access to the PC?
If so, please try creating a ZIP backup of the project on the PC (File -> Backup -> Backup To), then copying that to the Mac. This error sounds like the project was damaged in transit.
Katherine
This might help, especially if you need to transfer from the Mac…
Thanks for your help! I remembered I had also made the zip backups, but I opened those and they didn’t seem to be any different. It’s not that many links, so it’s not a big deal, but would be nice to at least know what went wrong for the future.
Hmm. Let’s try another angle on this.
On the Mac, create a brand new project, add a few documents, and create some Scrivener links between them. Do they behave as expected?
Katherine
Unfortunately, you’ll need to go through and correct each instance manually, removing the broken or misplaced links and reassigning them to the correct text. Scrivener for Windows records links in part by using a text range, so if the text is altered outside of Scrivener, the range can end up incorrect and the link misplaced. It’s rare that happens, but I’ve seen it when the project RTF files were edited directly in another application or when certain control characters were unknowingly added into the file–they can cause the range to be off, without anything appearing different in the file, and the Windows and Mac text systems respond to them differently. My guess is that’s what’s happened here, so it could have been something that was in the file for a while and just wasn’t obviously affecting anything until you started working with it on the different platform.
Mac Scrivener uses a slightly updated method for storing Scrivener links that does not depend on the range, so you shouldn’t run into a problem like this again if you’re working solely on Mac, and both platforms will be updating the method again in the next version, which should prevent any cross-platform quirks.