I save my work often - in two places - one copy on my hard disk and one on iCloud Drive. I use the copy on the desktop to open Scrivener. Sometimes, but not always, changes made to the document have been lost. That is, the changes I have made apparently did not save, or perhaps Scrivener is opening a different copy? I find myself going back in the document every time I open it to verify yesterday’s changes were applied and saved. What could be causing this? How can I remedy the problem.
Oh. Yes, I DO save my work. Hehe. I manually save the file in two locations about every 15 minutes or less while I am working.
Dave
Unlike most other programs, Scrivener saves your work every time you stop typing for 2 seconds. There’s no need to “save often”. This is a different paradigm to get used to. Normally, letting Scrivener save and have the default setting to Backup on project close would suffice to avoid losing work.
Just curious, how do you peform these saves? Do you use Save As? Do you use Back To/Backup Now?
If you use Save As, are you sure you’re opening the last saved document the next day?
Do you have Reopen projects that were open on quit ckecked?
I use the “Save Option” for the first save - that saves my work to the desktop file. I immediately “Save As Option” to save the work to ICloud Drive. This makes no sense that Scrivener does not remember the changes when I have saved the work. Both versions of the work loses the changes - yesterday’s work lost about 500 words and it appeared to have reverted to the document version that was saved on Friday. I am doing double work now, and it is beginning to affect the whole work. I appreciate any advice you might have.
IMHO, embracing the Scrivener’s working paradigm is a good way to go. It works quite well! This means:
Create your file on your desktop system and edit it there. Don’t mess with second copies.
Don’t use Save As (it is not needed, and if you do you have to set a new name for the file and continue working on the new name. Easy to get confused and open the wrong file the next day).
Let Scrivener auto backup work and create a copy of your project every time you close it.
Don’t save to iCloud. If you want a cloud backup of your work, configure Scrivener to save your backups to your Dropbox/Cubby account.
Well, I used the backup, etc. Did not use the Save As and worked on my book this morning. I stopped to have breakfast, closed everything first.
When I opened the document all of my changes were gone - vanished - eradicated - whoosh! No more.
I have now rewritten a section of about 1500 words three times. If I continue at this pace, my final version will never be completed. I will also never get out of this chapter. It’s like “Groundhog Day,” where every morning the sun rises and it is still Groundhog Day in a hard coded loop.
I need some solid ideas. Well, I guess I could export to Word and do it the old fashioned way, but that would defeat the beauty of Scrivener’s features.
How are you opening your work? If you’re using Scrivener’s “Reopen projects what were open on quit” option - that can lead to some odd things happening when used in conjunction with Save As.
What Save As does is makes a copy of your work - and then makes that copy the active project (ie you’re no longer working in the original project, you’re working on the copy).
So you may have started with a project on your computer, but if you Save As to iCloud - you are now working on that project on iCloud.
If you then close that project and then open the version on your computer - all your work will appear to be “lost”, it’s not really, it just got saved to the other copy on iCloud.
And if you’ve been using “Reopen projects what were open on quit” - there’s a fair chance it’s opened the iCloud copy, thus when you close down and then reopen the local copy - again all your work appears “lost”.
So my advice is not to use Save as, especially in conjunction with “Reopen projects what were open on quit”.
I just rely on Scrivener’s auto-save - it automatically saves your work after two seconds of inactivity.
And I rely on Scrivener’s auto-backup - it automatically makes a backup whenever I close a project.
I put about 2 million words a year through Scrivener, and just with those two things I’ve never lost any.
If you must make manual backups for your peace of mind, use the Backup commands rather than Save as.