Hi, first-time poster so please go easy on me as this is almost certainly a stupid question.
I have just upgraded from an ancient MacBook to a Macbook Pro and whatever the latest operating system is. On my old MacBook I was happily using Scrivener (the original), which now doesn’t work on the new MacBook. If I download Scrivener 3, will it automatically find the files in the old Scrivener? If not, is there a way to do it?
Many thanks, in advance.
Files (or projects) do not live in a program. They are stored in a folder somewhere on the hard drive of the computer. What you see in the Files menu of a program is a list of those files.
So what you need to do is to find the Scrivener projects using the Finder on your old computer, and transfer them to your new one. This is probably easiest done by copying them from the old computer to a USB stick and then plugging that into the new computer and copying them to whatever Folder you wish to use on the new computer.
This is really helpful - thank you!
When you say “the original” Scrivener, are you talking about Scrivener 2 or Scrivener 1? I ask because I don’t think version 3 can convert version 1 formatted projects directly.
Scrivener 1! Will I need to do a lot of old school copy and pasting?
You’ll need to do a double conversion, from Scrivener 1 to Scrivener 2, and then to Scrivener 3.
If your new Mac has Catalina, Scrivener 2 won’t run, so you might want to install it on the old computer and do the first conversion there. A few people on the Technical Support team are still running Scrivener 2 as well.
Worst case, you should be able to export your files from Scrivener 1, and then re-import the resulting RTF files into Scrivener 3.
Don’t delete anything, and especially don’t dispose of the old computer, until you’ve successfully transferred everything to Scrivener 3.
Be sure to have a look at Scrivener 3’s Tutorial project, available from the Help menu. A lot has changed.
Katherine
Can you install the legacy scrivener 2 on your old computer? Even if it’s a trial version, you have 30 days of use to open all your old projects, convert them to v2 format, and then transfer those copies to your new Mac to be converted to version 3 format. Best to do a search of your entire drive for everything ending in .scriv and open them all, one-by-one, to convert, then transfer them all together.
Version 2 can be downloaded here: literatureandlatte.com/scri … s?os=macOS
Either version 2.9 (the last version to run on Intel Macs, if that’s what your old mac was), or 2.5 should work on your old Mac.