I have several Scrivener files with the .scriv extension. At the moment, I’m on a Windows machine with Scrivener installed.
Clicking on the .scriv extension opens the file in Windows Explorer. Inside there is a .scrivx file. If I click on this file, Scrivener informs me that this is an old file format and would I like to update? If I click on “yes”, the file now opens in Scrivener, with a .scriv extension.
So both new files and old files use the .scriv extension. Older files use the .scrivx file extension, but older files might use the .scriv extension and contain a file with the .scrivx extension.
My question is, how does Scrivener distinguish between .scriv files which can be opened automatically and which .scriv files require a conversion to the latest format?
As you seem to have moved to Windows from Mac, you need to take on board that your .scriv file you were used to on Mac is actually.a package of potentially hundreds or even thousands of files. Windows does not have a package system, so it exposes the whole structure where the .scriv folder is actually the project containing within it the .scrivx file, which is the key document that you double-click to open, plus other folders and files. It is important that, if you need to move a project, that you move the whole .scriv folder and everything contained within it.
The Mac package system, hides all that from view.
When you click on one of the .scrivx files and a project opens, make sure you know exactly where that is in the file-system of the computer so you can keep them separate from the old version, as they will both be .scriv folders; when you’ve created a new version, I would zip the old version so you can’t open it again by accident.
Hope that helps.
Mark
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