Restoring from dropbox versions?

[JimRac]

Hi perwiz,

@perwiz

Brilliant! I found the text in the file you suggested. I then tried to search for the file and also found the text there, saved. I think most, if not all of the missing text was there!

I’m happy that you were able to find & restore your missing words.

@perwiz

Many thanks! Now I can confidently continue to use Scrivener for even bigger projects! It feels good to know that Dropbox saves versions of the files (at least 30 days I think), but I will complement this with a Time Machine backup.

I probably spent more time trying to find the missing text than it took to write it, but it was such a shock to loose it. And now I know where to look if it ever happens again.

Now that you’ve recently had a good scare, this would be the perfect time to urge you to get Scrivener’s zipped backup system properly configured.

Your Scrivener zipped backups should be your first line of defense against Scrivener data loss, not DropBox or Time Machine, because restoring a project from a zipped backup is more efficient and safer than either of those.

Scrivener’s built-in backup system is excellent, but–unfortunately–the default setting of “Retain backup files = 5” leaves a lot to be desired, as you’ve just discovered.

Have a look at this post I wrote for another user, which explains the various backup settings and my recommendations for each:

[url]Label Colours Not Working - #5 by JimRac]

Once you’ve got Scrivener’s backups properly configured, you can rely on your zipped backups for restoration issues related specifically to Scrivener. You should never have to go digging around in DropBox again, and the only reason you might need to go back to Time Machine is if you had some catastrophic system failure, like a hard drive loss.

Let me know if you have any questions.
Jim