So… because I kept getting a purple window around my font-panel, I searched the forum and saw that I was four builds behind the fix… so I updated it… and now I’ve lost EVERYTHING in my compile formats!!! Where’d they go? I can’t find them anywhere. The only ones I’ve found on my entire system are from last year! I’ve been working on trying to get 7 books to consistently format for a reprint and have spent DAYS on this stuff only to have it vanish? Why is this not built in as a failsafe when reinstalling or transferring to another computer? Why do you have to specifically exported/import? Pulling hair
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You updated Scrivener? or the OS of your computer ?
If you updated Scrivener, they should still be there. – Perhaps you simply installed fresh to a different directory ?
There should still be a folder of the previous install left behind (I am a Windows user, I can’t tell you where it’d be), in which your compile formats.
Project formats seem to be there, but anything “My formats” seems to be gone.
Gone from the compile panel ? (That’d be expected if you installed Scrivener fresh somewhere else than before. As in, enough of somewhere else so that the app is seen as a completely different one than the previous by your OS, something like that.)
That doesn’t mean that they are gone from the computer. But Scrivener can’t guess where they are. You need to go back to your previous Application Support folder and, fetching them from there, put them in the new Application Support folder.
(Valid in the case of a fresh install to a new directory. Else, I don’t know. As I said, I am a Windows user. That’s pretty much the whole of what I can do.)
Compile formats are stored separately from the Scrivener application, and should have been preserved, unless you used some kind of overly aggressive cleanup software after the de-install. I’ve been using the same formats for literally years in some cases.
By default, user-generated Scrivener-wide Compile Formats on the Mac are stored in the Application Support folder, which you can find with the Scrivener → Reveal Support Folder in Finder command. The default path is Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Scrivener/Compile Formats.
Project-specific formats are stored with the project itself.
As a Mac user, you should already be running a Time Machine backup, in which case you should also be able to restore from there.
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Another thing that might be going on is if you inadvertently switched from using the direct-sale version to the App Store version, or vice versa, as the latter will be sandboxed—meaning its Application Support folder is buried deep in the ~/Library/Containers area. Ultimately it means your settings and support files can become forked over time, if you switch back and forth.
You can get to the Application Support folder Scrivener is using, via the File menu within Scrivener, and then based on where that takes you, go to the opposing possible location in another Finder window and see if that’s where your missing stuff is.
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Compile formats are stored separately from the Scrivener application, and should have been preserved, unless you used some kind of overly aggressive cleanup software after the de-install.
That’s what I would expect. I did nothing but download the newer Scrivener dmg, dragged it into my applications folder and opened it up… and all “My formats” are gone. I checked the Application Support folder, which appears to be a blank-slate with the new install. (I didn’t do anything to Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Scrivener/Compile Formats)
Project-specific formats seem to be preserved… but I was trying to work on “one ring to rule them all” and it was in “my formats” while I worked on it before duplicating and tweaking for specific books.
Time Machine is only seeing as far back as when I installed the new version. :-/ If it does some sort of unix coding to rm files… that’s… problematic, as it’s not put into a safe little trashcan bag of holding.
That sounds like you might have switched from the App Store version, as @AmberV suggested. Like Time Machine thinks the folder you were looking at was only created with the new install.
Urgh… how would I know that would happen? I got it through the app store probably, but because I kept getting a purple box that froze everything, I just followed the links in the forum to download a newer version (from here). There’s nothing indicating there could be a conflict of interest if you installed it from one place or another.