I’m not sure if this is the right place for this as my question straddles the Windows/Linux divide but here goes…
I use Scrivener on Windows and on Linux and I’ve never had a problem transferring my projects between the two versions. Now I’m a bit worried that the recent Windows update might have made it unsafe to do this. I created a test project in Linux and then transferred it back to Windows to see if it would work and it came up with the message that the (linux created) project can’t be read in this version of Scrivener so do you want to update it. I clicked on yes and got a new version of the project in my folder. It seems to be fine - it opens and everything, just there are now two versions of the same project.
So my questions are: 1. can I still transfer the projects between the Scrivener versions without too much alarm, panic or handwringing, and 2. if I transfer them, will I have to basically update the project in Windows each time?
My guess (and it’s only a guess, based on reading previous posts here) is that, as you’ve seen, you can bring the projects from Linux to Windows and Scrivener for Windows 1.9 will update them to its new format. But you can’t go the other way: the files, in their new formats, will be unusable by the Linux version.
Every project you transfer from Linux and open in the new Windows version will have to be updated once and only once. When v. 1.9 in Windows has updated a project, it will always be able to use it. But it will also always be unusable in Linux (and the Linux version won’t know how to update, or downdate, the project to make it usable).
Until the Linux version is caught up, you may want to go back to the earlier version of Scrivener for Windows, in which you had cross-platform compatibility. At any rate, I wouldn’t open any actual, important project from the Linux version in Windows v. 1.9, as that will render it (I think!) unusable in Linux.
EDIT: For more information, see this thread, started by someone with the same issue as you; and this post by KB.
So far though when I’ve been trying the newly updated projects in Linux it seems to be actually working. But not something I want to rely on if there’s a possibility of data loss.
That’s interesting. I don’t use Linux, so I have no idea what’s going on. Have you updated the Linux version recently? It’s possible that they’ve brought it up to parity with Windows v. 1.9.
There is a new Linux build that is compatible with Windows 1.9, and you must use that version to keep the projects correctly formatted between versions. The older Linux build, 1.7.x, may still open the updated projects owing to a bug that wasn’t corrected until a later version that wasn’t published for Linux, but it is not saving the projects in the updated format and it will not read all the updated portions, such as the new link and comment/footnote format.
You can read the announcement post and download the updated Linux version from here.