I am normally so happy with Scrivener but it’s really annoying me today! I am working on setting up a new Scrivener file for a new draft of my book. I usually drag across files I need from my previous version with both versions of the book open in separate projects. I started doing that fine. But after a while the file I was dragging from started freezing - so that I couldn’t do anything with it.
I’ve had a quick look at the info available here. These are the things I’ve tried so far:
Turning the PC off and on again!
Using the compatibility tab and changing it to the top option. I’m on a Windows 10 computer but it didn’t list that option - only Windows 8 so I clicked on that one.
I then restarted computer to make sure it was applied.
I’ve also checked the lock in place option is off.
Nothing works and I can’t get into the files in the original project for ages after I’ve tried to do that and gradually it lets me open other files in the editor but then refuses to move again to a different file.
And one more thing - yesterday I realised the backups weren’t actually syncing to Dropbox as I’d thought they were - I hadn’t applied the setting. So I fixed that. But now my Dropbox is not up-to-date and it’s showing all the versions of that project (it keeps 5 on exiting) still refusing to sync onto Dropbox - that seems to be stuck on an endless loop - with the five last times I closed that Scrivener project, the rest are backing up correctly. Clicking into the comments on the dropbox attempted back up of that document it’s saying it’s deleted but it’s still showing as syncing.
Do you have another computer you could load Scrivener onto and try following the same steps? If it works on that one, then you know that the problem is something related to the system and not the project.
Alternatively, you might try creating a new project and instead of dragging files from the old project, import the rtf files from the old project folder into the new project using the “Import” command.
Thank you for your reply. Yes - I might try loading it onto a different laptop. I’ve looked at importing the RTFs and managed to locate them - but how would i tell which is which? They’re just numbered! Is there any way of looking at which number they are in the original project?
I don’t think there’s a way of telling which is which, beyond searching the folder for specific text you know is in the document you’re looking for. Windows will search inside the numbered documents and find the one with the text you search for, without opening it. This is a cruder way than I’d like, and someone might have a better way to figure out which is which. I only mentioned it as sort of a “last resort” kind of thing. You might just import all of them and delete those which you don’t need.
Yes - that’s a good idea. I’m pretty sure it was just one corrupted file - which seemed to have dumped some of its contents inside another file. I hope it’s OK now. Thanks for your help!
The *.scrivx file inside the root project folder contains a mapping between the files on the HDD and the Binder structure, i.e. the document title. Opening this file in a text editor like Wordpad, should help you get an idea which number is which file. Hopefully the *.scrivx file is not corrupted. Do not ever modify this file yourself.