On Windows, I crashed my laptop and so am trying to get everything running.
I have V3, with Dropbox as backup and Carbonite as an additional backup. I got Scrivener reloaded, I opened the Recent Project, but it seems to be an older version. I found the date of my last work before the crash on Carbonite, and have downloaded to my laptop, but Scrivener won’t open it.
I go to BackUp and Open Backup File but then have to go to the Windows Downloads, but it won’t open. There is a versions window that comes up, and then some cautions but it still won’t open the file.
Any suggestions?
A very common mistake when downloading from web sites is that they may not package the entire folder you select to download, into a zip file, or in some cases you might not realise you need the whole folder and instead only download bits and pieces of it, like the .scrivx file all by itself.
Make sure to instruct Carbonite to download the entire “my project name.scriv” master folder and its many files and subfolders. Without that, you have no project yet.
But if for some reason this copy isn’t seeming to work right, you can also look up where Scrivener creates auto-backups,[1] and check to see if Carbonite has been uploading those, too (and if it hasn’t, that’s definitely something to fix).
Refer to §5.2.3, Restoring from Backups, in the user manual PDF, for overall guidance on this topic, including where to look up your backups settings in Scrivener (though granted if you just did a fresh install it might be in a different place if you ever changed the defaults). ↩︎
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You may find your backups by going file >options >backup. Will see screen below consider doing all the options in red.
You can open backup folder which should be in a default location like inside your documents folder.
the zip backups should look like these These are single files and can be unzipped to restore a backup copy of the full project. These can be saved on any cloud service.
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Is there any way to open the .scriv file?
I followed that, but it just led me back to the files since I installed the V3
I was on V2 before… It had to have been saving somewhere, because I was working with it for some while.
If I went back to V2, would I find anything?
Firstly, SCRIV is a folder (your entire project) and SCRIVX is a file (your project’s control file, not its content).
Secondly, there was never a Windows version 2 of Scrivener. You’d only go back to version 1 if you haven’t backed up for years.
Onto your Dropbox backup of the Scrivener version 3 file.
Is the Dropbox backup Zipped?
If so, drag the project ZIP folder from Dropbox to your Downloads folder (out of the way of where you would normally save your project), basically copying it to the Downloads folder.
Then drag the SCRIV folder out of the ZIP into Downloads.
Rename the Project_Name.SCRIV folder to Project_Name_Old.SCRIV.
Click into Project_Name_Old.SCRIV folder and find Project_Name.SCRIVX file (still with its old name.
Open the Project_Name.SCRIVX file.
When it opens it renames itself Project_Name_Old.SCRIVX, i.e. with the same project name as the SCRIV folder.
That should be your latest backup of your last project save.
If so, save it to where it normally resides, using File → Save As to give the project its old name.
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To supplement sage advice above by numerous others, also see the Scrivener Manual, specifically “5.2.3 Restoring from Backups”.
Well,that’s the point, that isn’t helping. 
did you make zip backups and did you find them. If you noticed in the image above of zip backups they have a date they were created in windows even if you do not include the date in the zip backup.
If you have the backup extract it in a new location, like on your C drive and name your Scrivener Project folder (or anything you want) You can use Dropbox to back up a project, but if all this is confusing I would avoid that option till you understand how to organize and backup your projects.
I have a series of articles on backing up Scrivener that might help. Start here and the site has a search function.
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The L&L authors (and other readers) of the Scrivener Manual may well benefit if you could detail what specifically didn’t help and how they could improve this authoritative document.
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I shall be sure to keep that in my files.
Just as an FYI: I did find the old version. Through Carbonite, I searched “Scrivener” through Windows, and scrolled down until I found the day the laptop crashed. It was an incomplete file, and so I followed the suggestions in the popup and verified it was the one I had been working on. The Manual was a great help, but only after I scouted for nearly a week. So, thank you, thank you, everyone!!!
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