Hi! For all of 2025, I’ve easily been opening my project on both my iMac and my MacBook. All of a sudden, this week, I’ll log onto my MacBook and the changes from my iMac aren’t there. But the strange thing is that when I unpack the project file and look at the Dropbox version history of the docs in question, it’s there. So I don’t understand why it’s not appearing in Scrivener itself.
This has happened with two things:
I originally just had loose scenes within an Act I folder. On my iMac, I added subfolders for chapters as well as descriptions for all of them. On my MacBook, it was still just the Act 1 folder with loose scenes. I closed the project back out, checked my iMac, and they were there.
I added more to half of a scene on my iMac. I closed the entire program on my iMac. Then I opened it on my MacBook. The new portion wasn’t there. But still on my MacBook, I unpacked the project, found that data doc, and Dropbox version history had the missing text.
After Problem 1, on my iMac, I saved an entirely new version of my project to try to open that one on my MacBook. When that worked, I moved the old version completely out of Dropbox and just left that new one. I hoped that would fix whatever was happening, but then today, was missing that text.
There has been a couple times now where I’ll get this message, and I check my MacBook and the Scrivener app is completely closed! The entire app isn’t open, let alone my project. So weird.
That is potentially more evidence of sync not fully working between systems. A project is marked as being open by creating a special file within it. That file contains information (some of which you see printed in this dialogue box for your convenience). For example, if the other system was not allowed to finish syncing after you closed the project, this file would remain on the Dropbox server, and any other machine still online. Thus it appears to be open everywhere else, even though you did close it. This state is in fact a good canary-in-the-coalmine for ensuring sync completes.
Overall though, make sure you are following the advice in this knowledge base article. Dropbox does not completely sync your data between Macs any more by default. Typically the symptoms are more severe (like being unable to open the project at all), but I could see partial problems like missing content also being a possibility.
If you continue running into excessive issues for some reason, it might be easier to switch to the alternative sync method. The page explains the recommended settings and process in detail, but once you start using it you’ll see it really only adds one extra step to your workflow whenever you sit down to a new computer. It’s the only method I use.
Another possible factor: If you are in the habit of using the Recents Menu to open your Scrivener projects, it is also possible you are inadvertently opening an older version (perhaps a backup copy) of your project and that is why you are seeing un-updated content. Open your project file directly from the Finder to avoid this.
