For years and years, every time I copy, using multiple USBs, a Mac Scrivener project to my Windows 10 (Latest version) I get a box notification that it’s reindexing. When the project launches I get a conflicted documentation notification. The notification is for a pdf document checksum. But before I copy across the file I delete the old project completely from my Windows machine, so what’s it comparing with? I put the Conflicted document in the Trash and then delete it. But the process happens every time. My Mac project has no conflicted files.
My guess is that there is some permission issue with the file, or extended attributes maybe, that is confusing the Windows version. Do you have the original PDF somewhere, or a place you could download it from again? If so, I would try fully deleting it from the project from the Windows machine, and then try adding it again from that side.
It’s also a little curious that you are seeing reindexing. It might be because of this weird PDF, triggering a content mismatch flag, so I’d wait to see if it goes away along with the problem with the PDF (if the above works). If it continues though, something isn’t right with how things are being copied. Reindexing is ordinarily only necessary when syncing with the iOS version, following a crash (since updating the index on the disk is part of a healthy closing checklist) or if something has gone wrong with the integrity of the content, that the software is programmed to detect.
As for what it is comparing it with, as a point of trivia, that is not what conflict detection is. That process is looking for duplicate files that have been marked by a cloud sync service as being conflicted. Typically this is a result of accidentally editing the project in two or more locations without fully syncing. If two machines state they have updates to the server at once, the server says, “Okay, here are both of your copies, you figure out which is best, human”. Scrivener looks for these and basically imports them automatically into the project, removing the originals, so that you can do that audit yourself.
So in short, it makes no sense that you’d be getting that condition under the described process, unless how you copy between computers with USB drives is way different than how I do it (there are after all such things as offline sync tools).
I’ve cleaned my Trash on my Mac Mini 2(2025) and tried both USB and WeTransfer. Whichever option I choose I get the message about reindexing on my Windows PC.
So three questions: Shouldn’t my Mac be seeing this ..and informing me..? Can I go down into Package file and delete (using the Windows code). And lastly will I be able to access that on my Mac?