I have two current WIPs, one that’s 57k words long and for some reason, only the last 800 words I’ve written within the past couple days are visible. When I open the document and click on a chapter (with multiple scenes) in the corkboard view, I can see the first few lines of each scene, but when I click on the manuscript view, there are no words displayed and my word count goes down as if words were deleted (ex: my total word count goes down from 57k to 56k if I open up a 1k word scene in manuscript view). In my other WIP (86k words) not even the 800 words show up and I’m facing the same issues
When I close the scrivener window, I’m brought back to the original 57k word count, but I still can’t access any of the words. I’ve tried making copies of the file, backups of the file and copies of the backups and I’m still encountering the same issue. I’ve checked the actual file itself and within the data folder, each of those individual folders has none of my writing in them. I’ve tried restarting my computer, deleting the Scrivener software and re-installing it, I’ve tried crying and banging my head against the keyboard because I’m not tech savvy and this makes me want to cry and then tear my eyeballs out so I can’t cry anymore.
From my understanding, all of my scrivener files save to the cloud. I’m using Scrivener 3.3.6 and MacOS Sonoma 14.6.
Please let me know if there’s any more information I can offer! I greatly appreciate any help or guidance anyone can provide.
What “cloud” are you using? And why? My hunch your settings for that service, or the service flaws, are the root cause, not Scrivener.
And, do you have all “57k” words in one document in the project (which I infer from what you wrote). If true, also a big risk and misuse of Scrivener. But I accept my inference might be incorrect.
Where exactly is Scrivener reporting the word count?
When you look at “Manuscript view,” what exactly do you mean? Are you looking at an individual document, or a folder? If it’s a folder, are you in Scrivenings mode?
Which cloud? Has the service been instructed to make the folder containing your projects “available offline?”
Thank you for your response. I’m using icloud since it just automatically backs up anything on my computer there. There could be something wrong with that, potentially?
I have my 57k words divided into a 40 different scenes and 20 different folders for chapters, so from my understanding of your question, no they’re not all in one document? But they’re all in the same project?
Scrivener is reporting word count in the search bar at the top of the application. And by manuscript view I mean Scrivenings mode. I have folders for chapters with scenes within the folders and when I open these folders or individual scenes with Scrivenings mode, that’s when I experience this dissapearing.
I’m using icloud and I haven’t done anything to instruct it to be available offline, though my files have been accessible in the past when I’m not connected to wifi. I’m unsure how I would “instruct” icloud do make the folders available offline
Yea, all depends on how you tell Apple’s iCloud to work. If you have not told iCloud to keep files offline or if you have set it to “optimise” disk storage you’ll see these problems. Lots of posts on this here and look at L&L’s FAQs on their web site.
Also, IMHO, iCloud (or any sync service) is a poor and insecure backup method–just so you are aware.
Hmm. The word count goes down if you open the individual document? Does it go back up if you close it?
I agree with the people who are pointing fingers at iCloud.
What specifically happens is that iCloud “helpfully” “optimizes” your disk so that all or part of the project is stored exclusively on their servers, rather than on the local disk. Which can cause those files to be unavailable when Scrivener tries to access them. iCloud in particular is somewhat notorious for being opaque about what it’s actually doing.
