Scrivener launching, but not visible or accessible.

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Scrivener isn’t opening properly. When I create a new document, it launches, but then immediately disappears and becomes inaccessible.

I am using OSX Mountain Lion on a Macbook Air 2011 with Scrivener 2.3.1.

Here are the steps to reproduce my problem:

  1. Click on the Scrivener Icon in my launch bar
  2. Select the blank template
  3. Click on the “Choose” button
  4. Designate a file name and location (I select a location in my dropbox folder)
  5. Click the “Create” button

At this point, I am left staring at my screen having seen Scrivener launch, but without the Scrivener window appearing. The Scrivener menu bar appears, but is unresponsive. If I switch to another application, I am no longer able to get back to the Scrivener menu bar.

If I alt-tab, I see Scrivener is one of the application running. If I select it as the active application, the menu bar for Scrivener does not appear.

If I option-command-esc, I see Scrivener in the list of active applications, but it does not say that it is not responding.

If I do a four finger up gesture, which shows all my open windows, I do not see Scrivener among them.

I tried force quitting Scrivener and starting a blank document on my desktop to see if it’s a problem with dropbox, but the problem is identical. So, it seems unrelated to dropbox.

I also tried launching a new document with a different template (Novel). In that case, I just got a spinner on the Novel icon and Scrivener became unresponsive (though it did not appear so in the task manager).

I also tried opening the tutorial. That worked, however when I tried clicking on the red dot to close the window for the tutorial, it did not respond and Scrivener became unresponsive again.

I have uninstalled (drag to trash method) and reinstalled (app store) to no avail.

Naturally, this happens the day I have a deadline.

Any help is deeply appreciated! :slight_smile:

  • jp
2

Update:

I downloaded and installed the Scrivener demo off the company site. It has resolved the issue.

Question: will Scrivener in this state properly recognize that I have an app store license, or will it expire?

Thanks,

  • jp
3

You’re good to go with the downloadable version. It checks for your Mac store receipt and runs in a registered state if it detects one. So you can just stay on this version if you prefer. I would take a look at this knowledge base article, however:

scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/ … e-customer

The Mac App Store requires software to be sandboxed (which basically means it cannot as easily work with the rest of the computer) so it stores all of its support data in a different location. This has instructions for transitioning to the standard version, which doesn’t use sandboxing.