scrivener froze when I opened it, it opened on my novel, nothing moved so I signed out and re signed in,
I didn’t save because didn’t change anything and scrivener frozen. but when returned to book it only showing basic stuff that I had in that file over a year ago when just starting to use it.
lost all my drafts! the other files that weren’t opened when I signed out are ok but novel is gone.
is there a way to re-find that file I was working on a couple of days ago which has over years work on it?
You should check if you have a backup of your project,
Scrivener automatically save them by default (I think), unless you have asked him not to do it (it does it each time you close your project and keep the few last backups).
You can know their location through : Options -> Backup
If you don’t find any, you can also dig into the “Files” folder of your current project (where your.scriv file is located) ; all your files should be saved in the RTF format (although they have cryptic names, so you have to open them to know what they contain…).
You may also have snapshots. Sometimes Scrivener is configured (maybe even by default) to take snapshots when you edit a doc (mine was configured that way without me doing it and the size ballooned from 5 MB to over 300 MB over time—I had to change the configuration to keep it from taking snapshots).
So it might be worth looking a the Snapshot Manager to see if there are snapshots squirreled away inside the manuscript.
It does sound like you may not be making auto backups, though. Something to consider.
Do you save this in the cloud across multiple devices, hopefully some that are turned off or otherwise not always connected to the internet? If so, you can turn on that device without any internet connection and it won’t sync, thus allowing you to reclaim all your files from the last time that device was synced with an internet connection. Good luck to you!