Recovered files on creation of new file?????

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I’ve just used a template to create a new file and got the message saying that Scrivener had recovered files. WTF? This is a new project… There can’t be any files to recover.

How to do I get rid of this? It seems to have started after a recent update to Scrivener and I thought perhaps it was a result of something that had gone wrong when I had to force a shutdown of the computer rather inelegantly.

Anyone else seen this? Anyone know how to make it go away?

Thanks

2

Hi,

What template did you use to create the project? One built into Scrivener or one of your own? When the project was created, there should be a _RecoveredFiles folder at the bottom of the binder - what is in there? 1.52 and 1.53 made Scrivener much better at checking .scriv files as it opens them. If there are some documents inside the package that don’t have corresponding items in the binder, it places them in this folder. This is usually caused because a user has deleted files in the binder but a permissions conflict on the machine has left them inside the package. Only the “empty” template is truly empty when creating a new project. All of the other templates are really archived minimal projects, so if the template was created from a project with this problem (which may not have been detected until now), then this would be the cause. If the template is one of the ones that come with the Extras, then obviously I need to fix it. If it is one you made yourself or that someone else made, then you will need to update the template by creating a new template from it, deleting the recovered files folder, and using File > Save As Template to save a new version of the template without the problems.

All the best,
Keith

3

I can confirm this problem. Happens with 1.5.3 on a PPC Mini running 10.5.8 when opening the short story template. Doesn’t happen opening the screenplay template. There is one recovered file and it is empty. I rolled back extras to 1.5.1, didn’t help. Rolled Scrivener back to 1.5.1 and everything’s fine again. (Don’t have a copy of 1.5.2. Out of curiosity is there a download directory where prior versions are available?)

4

No, there’s no place you can download previous versions because that would be asking for support hell. :slight_smile: The old versions are buggy and deprecated. Besides, this isn’t a problem with the new version of Scrivener, but a problem with the short story template itself - previous versions of Scrivener just weren’t very good at detecting it. I’ll fix the templates for 1.54, but in the meantime you can fix up the short story yourself by following the instructions in my post above.
Thanks and all the best,
Keith

5

I’m having the same problem. For instance, when I start a new novel project, after picking a name it throws the “recovered files” dialog and in “_Recovered Files” it has one text file – which is empty but the card reads

and so forth. And I’m sorry if I’m being dense, but I didn’t quite understand the fix above.

6

I saw it in Novel template, too, and will fix it for 1.54.

The fix:

  1. Create a new project from the template (you’ll get the error etc). When you see the template chooser, copy the description of the novel template at the bottom before creating the project.
  2. Trash the _Recovered Files folder and empty the Trash. Then click back on the “Start here” item at the top of the binder, so that will be the first thing you see when you create a project from the updated template.
  3. Go to File > Save as Template. Enter “Novel (Standard Manuscript Format)” for the title and paste in the description you copied in step 1.
  4. Save the template and choose “OK” to overwrite the old one.

This will replace the current template with a “fixed” version. This is exactly what I’ll be doing to fix these templates myself before redistributing them.

All the best,
Keith

7

KB,

FYI, I just had the same problem with a _Recovered Files folder upon creation of a new novel project.

Best,

MAK