Can someone give me some guidance on opening a Scrivener file on my iPad? I’ve put my 3 Scrivener projects in a folder in Dropbox, but each time I open one of them into turns into code. Bear in mind that I’m new to Dropbox and Elements. Thanks.
Actually, what you want to do here is keep your Scrivener projects in some other place, like your Documents folder. Elements in a plain-text editor, and couldn’t even begin to read Scrivener’s format, hence all of the code. Hopefully you didn’t make any changes to those files while they were open, because that could cause issues.
All right, with them safely outside of that area, open one of the projects and select File/Sync/with External Folder...
. That will let you create plain-text files that Elements can read and edit. You’ll probably want to read up a bit on how to use this feature. It’s not too complex even though it has a lot of options, most of these can be left default. The main one you want to make sure you set is the format to .txt, not RTF, those will just look like code as well on the iPad. Now what happens is, as you edit these files in Elements, when you get back to your computer, you can run that same menu command and Scrivener will look for changes in the files, and make them in your projects right in place. You’ll want to create a new folder for each project within the Elements folder. You’ll be warned if you try to put everything into one folder.
We’ve put together a helpful video showing how to do all of this. I believe the video focusses on a different iPad editor, Plaintext (I could be wrong about that though), but the process on your computer would be identical. From the computer side, these two programs work very similar. Scroll down the video page for a tutorial called Folder Sync.
Fantastic. I will study this and work it out. Thanks.
It works beautifully. I use Notbooks on my iPad and iPod Touch and sync my projects in the manner already indicated by Amber. Make sure to select txt as your sync format and you will be happy as a clam at high tide.