I was using the Scrivener manual in Preview, hit some key commands by accident, and the file closed. Now I can’t open it again from the Help menu. I know I can get it from the website, I was curious if there was a way to fix this, I’m not sure what I’ve done. It was oh-so-useful to get it from the help menu.
I tried the recent files option in Preview but it doesn’t show up there. I killed it!
You might’ve deleted the file by accident. Preview has this lovely trick of using the cmd-delete shortcut to delete the actual file you’re currently viewing. (I’m sure, somewhere, someone found this useful once. I cannot imagine who or what or why.) Try checking your OS trash to see if it’s there. If it is, you can move it back to where it belongs:
Open the Scrivener.app (show package contents), then navigate to Contents/Resources and place the .pdf back there in the Resources folder.
Even if it’s gone from the trash, if the .pdf is missing from the Resources folder (which sounds like the case), you can download one off the website and place it there and you’ll be able to access it from the Help menu.
You could also just reinstall Scrivener, and that will replace it. (And it won’t mess up any of your preferences or anything.)