Right clicking the Scrivener icon in the Dock should reveal the project. The only way to flush that list is to clear Recent Files inside Scrivener. Not even moving a project to the Bin and emptying the bin clears a project from that list.
OH! Yes, it appears when I right-click the icon!!
But how do I open it??? When I select it from the list nothing happensâŠ
And I can see that when I select the other projects from the list, they do open⊠so getting closer, but still confused!
On Windows at the moment, but this should work the same on Mac: Hovering over the project name will at least display its old path. You can go to the location to see if something happened to the filename, or more specifically the extension, which would impact on searches.
Unfortunately hovering doesnât do anything⊠nor does clicking, or right clicking. Tantalisingly close âŠ. any other ideas? Thank you so muchâŠ.
Are all your .scriv projects in the same folder, e.g. containers of ~Documents/Scrivener Projects? Good practice, avoids confusion, in my opinion.
Are there any unfamiliar projects?
Whatever happened seems to have perpetuated to your backups, which is strange, because even deleting a project wouldnât affect its historic backups. Youâd need to delete and/or alter them too. And the latest backup is the backup of the last live project you saved under the same name, with a few additional elements included in the name, depending on your selections.
You could also try File > Show Application Support Folder and check inside the Backups folder there, the original Backup default when first installing Scrivener. I know on Windows when Scrivener loses touch with a cloud service localised setting for whatever reason, backups simply revert to the default.
UPDATE: Scrap this idea. It doesnât exist on Mac.
But File > Find All Projects in Spotlight is a nifty feature from within Scrivener.
On macOS Scrivener, the default (and I think but not sure) and turned on folder for backups is:
~/Library/Application Support/Scrivener/Backups
I find that a bit âburiedâ and to enable me to monitor backups more easily I change to
~/Backups/Scrivener
where I also use for other named applications backups under ~/Backups
Just me.
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Find All Projects within Scrivener does not bring it upâŠ..
The deleted backup folder is the greatest mystery!
Tried that - no sign of the missing project!
No unfamiliar projects.
I keep the projects in subject folders, not in a distinct Scriv folder.
So frustrating to see it when I right-click the icon but not to be able to get at it anywhereâŠâŠ
Probably not a bad idea to put all your Scrivener projects i one folder. Use names of projects to distinguish. Not that that work process would have maybe avoided this current issue, but at least hunting and searching would be avoided.
A really big mystery how the backup folder and automated backups not there ⊠as I said, I think backups is enabled by default when installing the software. Which means if backups not being taken (on 2-seconds of inactivity), then something turned if off. And to have the folder missing ⊠well an even bigger mystery.
This tip didnât work for me, it simply opened the project each time:|
Showing File Location from the Dock
-
Right-click (or Control-click) an app icon in the Dock to see its list of recent files.
-
Press and hold the
Command(â) key on your keyboard. -
Click on one of the listed files in that menu.
-
macOS will open a Finder window showing the exact folder where the file lives and highlight it automatically. [1, 2, 3]
This one might, if you missing project pitches up in the recents list:
Alternative Method via Apple Menu
-
Click the Apple logo (
ïŁż) in the top-left corner of your screen. -
Go to Recent Items.
-
Hold down the
Command(â) key while selecting a document from the list to reveal its containing folder in Finder.
To be clear, this is an artifact of how the Recent Projects menu works. You could (deliberately) move, rename, or delete a project and its original name and original location would still appear on this list. Itâs a common cause of confusion. Unfortunately, it does not mean that the project is still there, but hidden.
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@LM, are you comfortable using the Terminal app? If so, try the following when you open it:
find . -name â*.scrivâ
Just hit return and it should pretty quickly start showing you everything within subfolders of your /Users/[username] folder that has a .scriv extension. If your project file got moved somehow to another folder, that should find it. You could try the same for finding your backups, too, using â*.bakâ instead of â*.scrivâ
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I presume the forum software sexes up the quotes, so copying and pasting that wonât work. It does work as âpreformatted textâ, though.
find . -name '*.scriv'
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that command works great. good catch.
yes have done that, no sign of it
Ahh I see - so itâs just evidence that I didnât imagine the projectâs existence! At this point it seems pretty certain that itâs gone, Iâve tried everything everyone has suggested here and more. I guess why and how it disappeared â along with ALL the backups!! â will remain a mystery. But thanks for all the advice
The other option is to use that command to search your whole drive, but youâll come up with A LOT of junk results (directories and files that canât be accessed because theyâre system-restricted will display an error on screen). So, when Terminal opens do this first:
cd /
Hit return, then do the other command for .scriv and hit return. Then do .bak.
This may be the solution, because Spotlight doesnât index system folders and files, so if your file(s) somehow got moved into one of those, Spotlight wonât find it. I really hope that works to find all or at least some of your work.