I am using Scrivener of a large nonfiction project. The entire project is saved to Dropbox so I can work on the project at home on my desktop and on the road with my laptop. I recently spent a solid two hours of writing on the laptop. When I got home to pick up where I had left off, none of the new material showed up.
Next I went back to the laptop and loaded the project. All of the new material was there. I saved the project, then closed the project, then opened the project again on the desktop machine. Same problem. The changes do not show up on my desktop.
To test whether or not Dropbox was working properly, I created a Word document on my laptop that I saved to a new folder in Dropbox. When I opened Dropbox on my desktop the new folder and document were there. So the problem isn’t with Dropbox.
It sounds like the project got conflicted on Dropbox. This is relatively easy to accidentally do, since Scrivener’s format is comprised of many smaller files instead of one big one (like a Word document). All it takes is opening the project before Dropbox finishes updating the computer, for instance.
We have an article on best practices, which also includes a section on how to check for conflicts and tips on how to resolve them.
Thanks for the reply. I have read the article you mentioned prior to using Dropbox. I reread the article again just now. I still don’t know how to fix the problem. Right now I can make changes on my desktop and they do not show up when I open the project on the laptop and visa versa.
It’s possible that this occurred because I shut the laptop down before Dropbox have uploaded the changes. Regardless of how it happened, I need to fix it. The laptop has the most recent changes. I looked at the individual files and can’t figure out anything from that.
Can you give me more specific instructions on how I might resolve this issue?
Did you find anything that looked like a duplicate of another file, but with a parenthetical after it? If you see something like that, it’s a conflict. If this happens to the main project file, then you can accidentally end up opening two different versions of the project. You need to figure out which one is newest and use just that.
It sounds like you might be loading the projects with the Recent Projects list, but for now stick with loading by going directly to the project folder in Dropbox and double-clicking on the project file, once you sort out which is newest (the modification date is probably good enough). Load the project from that file on the desktop. Hopefully things should be back in sync. You should go through the rest of the project files, particularly in the Files\Docs sub-folder, as that is where your writings and research are actually stored. Check for conflicts there, too.
Once you get things sorted out, I recommend you remove the old project “scrivx” file, and either set it aside for a bit, or just trash it. Then rename, if necessary, the newer one that you keep back to “project”.
For the benefit of other users who have experienced this problem, here are the steps I took to fix it:
After looking closely at both computers and comparing files, I noticed that I actually had two versions of Dropbox on both computers: the Dropbox download, which shows up in explorer, and the Dropbox Metro app.
Uninstall the Dropbox Metro app on both computers.
Assuming that my laptop had the most up-to-date version of my project, I moved the project out of Dropbox.
I moved the project on my desktop out of Dropbox. I uninstalled Dropbox then reinstalled the download.
I restarted both computers.
On my laptop, I moved the project back into Dropbox.
I opened Scrivener on my laptop. I got an error saying project not found. I selected open recent project and opened the project in Dropbox.
I saved then closed the project.
I opened Scrivener on my Desktop. Got the error project not found (or no project found). Selected open recent project, navigated to Dropbox and opened the project.
Update: All of the work I did in my previous reply did not fix the problem. I worked for four days straight on my desktop with the last update at 12:04 am on the 9th. I went on a trip. When I opened Scivener on my laptop, the file that opened up was a file from the 5th.
I decided that I would try uninstalling and reinstalling dropbox on my laptop to see if I could get the latest file from my desktop. After uninstalling Dropbox on my laptop, I logged into Dropbox to download the desktop file. Now Dropbox online didn’t show any folder at all.
I called my wife to check my desktop computer. I had her look at the files in Dropbox. The file was there but the date on the file in Dropbox was August 5, meaning that I had just lost four days of work.
I spent another twenty minutes having my wife delete the old file in Dropbox, moving and then renaming the most recent backup. So now my Desktop has a current version, but I’m afraid to do anything on my laptop.
I think a method that might work better for you is to create a zipped backup, and send that to the laptop. Open the zip, take the project out onto the laptop’s disk, and work on it there, tossing the .zip. Then you just do the same thing in reverse when you move back to the desktop.
The File/Back Up/Back Up To… command is the key to making this easy. There are instructions on that article page I linked to earlier in the thread. It’s listed near the bottom as an alternative method. It’s the method I use myself for this kind of stuff. I don’t work on the project in the synced folder, I just use the sync to easily pass zipped copies around. I keep the versions of the project offline as a result.
A neat trick is to point both of your computers’ automatic back-up folders to the same Dropbox folder. Then whenever you quit Scrivener, it will automatically zip a copy of your project to sync, and it will show up on the other computer. Now you can just open the .zip, drag the project folder out, and you’re ready to work with the latest copy.