Hi! I’ve noticed an odd situation with a Scrivener project. I was working on a project and, for some dumb reason, decided to delete all the Inspector notes. When I realized that I would in fact need them, I restored from the morning’s Time Machine backup. However, the restored package, even though taken from a Time Machine backup at 5 am today, nonetheless has a modification time of 12:49 and does not have the notes.
I was able to use Scrivener’s own backup in my library to restore, but I am curious about why the Time Machine restore didn’t work. I know that Scrivener’s files are actually packages, but that shouldn’t affect backups and restores, should it?
I’d be grateful for any light you can shed on this problem.
I cannot think of anything in theory that would explain that. What were the precise steps you took to delete the document notes, and to restore the project (did you restore it over the current project, was it open while you did that)?
You’re right the point that is mentioned in the manual wouldn’t pertain to this problem.
To delete the document notes, I clicked the little x in each note window. I saved the project and quit Scrivener before changing to the Finder, entering Time Machine, and restoring from that.
The folder with the project is being synced via Dropbox, but that shouldn’t affect the Time Machine backup. I didn’t make any changes to the folder on another computer, so all synchronization should have been from my Mac to the Dropbox servers, not the other way around.
Oh okay, you mean comments, the yellow “post-it” notes in the sidebar? I was thinking the “Notes” field you get from the Inspector, where each document has its own notes file. Either way it is a strange result.
You mention Dropbox being in the equation, that might be more pertinent than you thought. Consider that Dropbox uses timestamps to do its magic, and that Time Machine would roll things back to an earlier time stamp. Perhaps Dropbox got wildly confused and “updated” components of project. I’ve never actually tested that precise scenario, so I’m just speculating here.
I would second Ioa’s thoughts here. Try grabbing the old project from Time Machine again, but restore it to another folder (Desktop, for instance) and see if that works.