I have gone to cut (using CMND/X) a chunk of text from a text file within a folder. Then I went to a new folder and have gone to past the text in here. Previous work on the clipboard has pasted into this folder.
I go back to this text file and realise that I have clicked simple ‘X’ rather than ‘command/x’. I go to click ‘undo’, as would normally work in such a situation, however the ‘Undo’ function is blank.
I tested this scenario with an unimportant piece of work (replacing text, going to another folder, and coming back, and being unable to click undo).
The work, appears, to be lost.
I have not used the back up function (well, I do now) and I have looked in my dropbox files to no avail (the file has the ‘x’ as per the mistake above).
Did you make sure to click into the editor after switching back to the text file before checking undo? If you clicked on the file in the binder to load it and then immediately checked for Undo, the focus would be in the binder and the Undo would be unavailable. Clicking into the editor should make Undo available. Simply switching text documents in the editor does not clear the undo stack, so correcting the mistake should have been possible (and still be possible if you haven’t closed the project yet).
Yes, clicked to ensure the cursor was flashing from within the text file (tried both as the file appears at the bottom of the folder file, and as a separate text file). Undo was still unavailable.
Sorry, didn’t mean to leave you hanging. Hm, that’s very strange that the undo isn’t working. I can’t think of a way of loading the file that might make that inaccessible for some reason, so long as you had focus in that document in the editor.
Well, two further ideas for the immediate situation:
First, it sounds like your project is saved in Dropbox? In which case, although your current version of the document includes the “x”, Dropbox may have a previous version that is correct. Have you tried logging into Dropbox on the website, locating that particular file in your project, and checking the previous versions? (When the file is selected, “Previous Versions” should be an option along the top of the list, along with move, copy, etc.) You can download the older versions and then copy and paste back into your project.
Second, if the text is from an earlier session (i.e. you’ve closed Scrivener since you wrote the correct text, but not since it went missing), you may be able to dig it out of your project’s search.indexes file. You’ll find that in the Files folder, if you right-click on the .scriv file and choose Show Package Contents. Copy the file to somewhere outside your project and open it in a plain-text editor (TextEdit will be fine), then I suggest using a search tool to jump to the text, and copy it back into your project.
Both these methods are a bit extreme, but hopefully one at least will manage to restore your text. Note that in general, I don’t recommend poking around inside your project (whether on Dropbox’s site or on your local drive), particularly with the project open. It’s also a good idea to make a backup of the project first, lest any other problems arise from an accidental misclick while doing so. Just right-click the .scriv file and choose the “Compress” option before you dig in.