Recovering a lost file

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I recently sent some work to Word in order to share it as a PDF. When I returned a few days later, there is no sign of the project. Help!

2

Welcome to Scrivener and the Scrivener forum.

Sorry for your trouble, but there is hardly any information here to assist. But it is extremely unlikely that the project is gone. So ā€¦.

  • How did you ā€œsendā€ to Word? Export? Compile as DOC or DOCX?
  • You didnā€™t consider compiling to PDF direct from Scrivener so as to avoid Word?
  • How did you conclude that there is ā€œno signā€? What is the ā€œsignā€ you are looking for? The ā€œOpen Recentā€ button? or Menu File ā†’ Recent Projects ā€¦ ?
  • What exact folder location on your Mac did you setup for holding your project?
    • If you donā€™t know, use macOS Finder you can go to this folder and look, or you can use the ā€œsearchā€ feature to look for *.scriv to find the Scrivener ā€œpackageā€ holding your project.

Meantime, have you setup an automatic backup yet. If the worst and in fact something you did made the project disappear, with a backup you can get it back. But regardless, a backup should be setup and be tested.

3

wow - that was quick! Iā€™m not very good with the terminology within Scrivner and so Iā€™m easily confused when I come to do something.

  • I looked at a couple of ways of doing it, but I think I ended up using Compile as DOC?? Iā€™m not sure now why I didnā€™t just Exportā€¦ When you Compile, does that take it off your projects? I realised - as I was trying to find this project - that another project was also missing.
  • I went to where you can ā€˜Open Recentā€™; and, in another project, I went to ā€˜Recent Projectsā€™ and it wasnā€™t listed.
  • When I try to open the Scrivner folder in Finder, I get ā€˜the alias ā€˜Scrivnerā€™ canā€™t be opened because the original item canā€™t be foundā€™.
  • Foolishly, I didnā€™t back it up. Would you recommend doing this every time you work on something?

So it looks like itā€™s gone. Thankfully, I had only written a couple of short scenes, and I now have them in Word. Which is also where I have my other ā€˜missingā€™ project.

Thanks

4

You can locate all projects on your computer by searching for .scriv files in Finder.

You can also locate Scrivenerā€™s automatic backups by going to Scrivener ā†’ Preferences ā†’ Backups and opening the backup folder in Finder.

Are you using iCloud, Dropbox, or any similar service?

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Hi, thereā€™s no sign of it when I look in finder using .scriv.

I canā€™t see Preferences in Scrivener?? When I close a document I get the message: ā€˜The backup folder does not exist.ā€™ along with the option to Try Again or OK - I just click Ok.

I donā€™t store things in iCloud or Dropbox.

Sorry, Iā€™m not being very helpful!

6

Sorry, Mac OS renamed it to ā€œSettingsā€ a few releases ago.

Please double-check your iCloud settings. Apple has a tendency to change the defaults without notice. In particular, check the ā€œDocuments and Desktopā€ and ā€œOptimize Mac Storageā€ settings.

1 Like
7

By way of encouragement while others help you here, you should not hastily conclude your project is just gone ā€” there are lots of reasons to think that is probably not true. Unlike Word, for example, Scrivener does not just hold what you are working on in active memory while you are working on it, it writes the work to your harddrive pretty much whenever you pause for a few seconds. So, your project was actively written to disk the whole time. So, it did not just vanish in the ether.

Scrivener by default makes backups of your project files (to a designated folder on your harddrive) whenever you close them ā€” so you are covered there. It is still, of course, important to have a practice of making a physical backup of you harddrive on a regular basis ā€” Appleā€™s built-in harddrive backup software (Time Machine) suggests by default backing up every ten days.

ā€”gr

p.s. My advice: Donā€™t just rely on the Recents menu. Know where in the Finder you stored your project when you made it.

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8

Thanks everyone for your help and support. Iā€™ve now found the project - in my bin??! I most definitely did not delete it, so Iā€™ve no idea how this could happen. Anyway, from all the advice and information youā€™ve supplied between you, I will have a better understanding of how to manage my Scrivner projects! Thanks again!

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