This is the 2nd time I have sat down to Scrivener to receive an alert that my project is in the trash. I am attaching a screenshot.
My project is NOT in the trash. I have never, ever moved my project to the trash.
I did find the recovery file but I am unable to open it. Can anybody help me? I am totally freaked out!
What version of Scrivener are you using?
Could you show us a screenshot of Finder showing the folder where you have your project, and also of the content in the Trash folder?
I am on version 2.8.1 of Scrivener
I’m attaching a photo of the trash. It’s not in any of the folders there.
I am not sure what you are asking for in regard to Finder so I am guessing. I went to Scrivener and hit OPEN then directed toward the folder.
Thank you for your attention!
I’ve tried downloading Scrivener again but it still won’t open.
Hi Crista,
it looks like your text files are there in the recovery folder. So if the worst comes to the worst, you can bild a new Scrivener projekt by importing these files or dragging them into the binder.
But let’s see if we can open your original Scrivener document.
Where is your Scrivener document located? Did you try double clicking on the .scriv file? What happens when you do that?
Then, please take a look at the revored files folder within your trash folder. Maybe it’s there. Did your computer crash or did you do a hard reboot?
Good luck and keep us up to date!
JS
Thank you for your reply. The files are not in the trash folders, I’ve looked several times. It’s not them
The document is in a recovery folder in my documents but I cannot open it. I tried downloading Scrivener again but I still can’t open it. They do open as text files without Scrivener but that’s not helpful. I need to keep them in order.
My computer did not crash. This is the second time I woke up to see a message saying my project is n the trash. I did not put it there.
To clarify one point from the above, the “Recovered Files” folder won’t have everything in the project. Only those that have been modified recently, that are currently still stored in memory. Since it can’t write them to the disk back into the original project, saving them as text files to a safe location like ~/Documents is a good fallback.
As to what is causing the software to think the project is in the trash, I don’t know what could cause that. I’m pretty sure that check is very simple, and wouldn’t be caused by a general permissions issue (which would cause a different though similar form of error message). Whatever the case it doesn’t seem to like where it is currently stored, so maybe try (with it closed) copying it to a different folder (like ~/Documents) and see if the problem persists when loading it from there.
Amber I thank you so much for your help but can you dumb it down? I’ve spent a frantic long day with this and I don’t understand what you’re saying. I need baby steps.
Let’s start with the beginning. Where is my project? If the recovered files aren’t my book - where is it?
How do I get Scrivener to open it?
I couldn’t say with certainty. When you create a new project you’re asked where to put it, and you can choose anywhere on your Mac to save it, so it’s not like they are all in one predictable location for everyone. It could be though that if you didn’t deliberately choose a location that it is stored in the Documents folder, which is the default location.
A tool that might be of some help here is the File ▸ Show Project in Finder command, if it is open—and right below that is a command to run a Spotlight search for all projects.
As for how to open it, Scrivener works like most other programs—it’s the same as if you wanted to load a PDF file. You would double-click on it in Finder, or you could use the File ▸ Open… command and navigate to it that way. It sounds the latter is something you’re familiar with, but when you tried to do so earlier, you tried to open the recovery folder which isn’t a project—it’s just a folder with some text files in it. That’s why they were all greyed out.
I back up each time I use Scrivener, several times a day. When I do a search in finder the only thing I find with .scriv is that folder in documents.
The last time this happened, last week, I did find the missing folder in the trash as the alert had predicted. But not this time. And I believe that when I last left Scrivener, I didn’t even close it.
How dire is this scenario? Could my book be missing forever?
I think I got it!!! THANK YOU SO MUCH!Lets cross our fingers that I don’t post again. 
3 stars.
The suspense built from the first post, and all hope seemed lost, but then, in the 3rd act, we just get a view over the protagonist’s shoulder of a newspaper headline: “Missing Project Found!” and then fade to black.
Where was it!? Who or what was likely responsible?! Will there be justice? Did the project survive the ordeal unscathed? GAH! I hate this kind of ambiguous ending.
Should I redact this due to spoilers? 
Katherine
Well …???
