Scrivener is now destroying chapters whenever I save. The folder remains, but the text is gone. The backup-files suffer the same thing. I’ve restored chapters from older back-up files, but they get eliminated again, or others get wiped. I’ve changed the save as name, it doesn’t help. I’ve lost about a thousand words of new writing twice in a row, plus a lot of work finding missing pieces in old back ups, only to have them lost again on the next save.
Is there some way to trouble shoot this? If I can’t solve this problem, I have to quit using Scrivener, obviously. Is there a way to save projects in Word format, or Libre Office format without having to open each project in Scrivener first- I don’t want to open them because it’s destructive to do so.
Please help- I just got back to working on my novel after a serious bout of writer’s block and an extended illness, and this is making me crazy.
Do you have OneDrive ?
If so, or if you have another cloud service where your files are stored, that’s most likely your issue.
Plenty of threads related to “disapearing files” or “text” or … on the forum.
A quick search will get you there.
In short, this usually happens when the files Scrivener needs are no longer available offline.
Honzo. I’d suggest trying to follow Vincent’s suggestion. I’m quite happy to use Drop Box to save the .scriv file, however, I also ensure that I automatically back up the project to my documents folder, and also sync the files in rtf format to D:/Dropbox/Apps/Scrivener/NameOfBook which enables me to directly edit the files in microsoft. Despite this one of my books did get out of synch recently when I started to use an older file. Its taken me a month or so to restore everything to its proper state.
I would make sure you save zip backups on your computer and not in any cloud sync folders till you figure this out. Try using the File > Backup to function to backup zip files to say a folder on your desktop and see how that works. Just try importing any word document to see if added material saves.
Agree with the concern about one drive. If you use dropbox make sure it is set to save files offline as well.
Here is a link to my article on cloud backup, Overview on Cloud Backups — My Writing Journey
Or search the L&L database.
I have tried to follow Vincent’s advice, but I have lots of local backups of the scriv files, and I never access the few copies of something that shows up on OneDrive by accident. I’ll see about syncing in .rtf, but the bottom line is that I don’t rely on any kind of off-line storage. Everything is either on C: or D: drive.
Sounds like zip files would be helpful but the problem does not seem to be with saved files getting corrupted, but with files being corrupted either while being edited in Scrivener, or when saving. I say this because the .bak files on my external drive have the same errors as the regular save files. This may have something to do with Windows 10. My tower is usually on 20 to 50 hours at a time, and someone suggested to me that any time Windows goes to sleep strange things may happen. I guess constant cold reboots are going to be necessary.
On a somewhat related note, does anyone know if Scrivener works on Linux?
OneDrive doesn’t quite ask for permission.
It just snatches stuff from your local drive (anything that is under its umbrella is exposed to such) and moves it to the cloud. And sometimes it decides you don’t actually need that file to be local. Which, in the case of a Scrivener project, leads to an issue very similar to your description.
My point being that it doesn’t need to be your doing.
You might think you are not using OneDrive so that can’t be it, but this is the wrong way to look at it. If you have OneDrive still installed (or free to do its thing, the least * ), you ARE using it. Whether you like it or not.
(* There might be a way to block it; but that I don’t know, I just ditched it whole.)
The other to do is set a shutdown shorter than the time for your computer to go to sleep. Under Options > General > Startup you can set a time for automatic shutdown in case you do not do that when you finish working with Scrivener. That might prevent computer sleeping issues. Is this every project of just one.
I think I may have to remove OneDrive completely, then, I don’t seem to be able to control its behavior. No great loss, I think. However, if when I create a save path it goes to my harddrive, doesn’t Scrivener choose that first? Is there some setting in Scrivener needed to control that? I’ll definitely get rid of OneDrive, but it seems odd that that could be the problem if all my saves are to my hard drive.
I think I’ll just go for no sleeping and a hard shutdown. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of days, and haven’t had new instances of the problem. When it was happening, it affected several different projects, though, so there’s a fair amount of lost work. Since I don’t know how long it has been going on, there might be lots and lots of empty folders that I think are full. I guess I’ll find out next time I turn my attention to each project.
I think I’ll have to really clean up the hard drive, too, as it boots fairly slowly. Fun times!
From Scrivener’s point of view, all saves are always to your hard drive. The problem is that OneDrive (or another service) “helpfully” moves things behind Scrivener’s back.
Depending on the settings, cloud services will “optimize” your disk by moving files to their servers. They will not say that the file is “erased,” but it’s not accessible to Scrivener until it has been re-downloaded.
Here is Microsoft’s explanation of OneDrive’s File on Demand feature.
If you know what you’re doing and you know what it’s doing, then it can be useful. (E.g., I have a spare laptop with FOD enabled for all folders except for Scrivener folders, because the SSD is too small to contain all my files.)
But if you don’t understand FOD, it can be a dangerous thing to have enabled.
Well, I removed the OneDrive app, and it has disappeared from my toolbar, but interestingly it continues to exist as a file with all contents intact. Most of it is antiquated nonsense, and some of it is damaged, so it looks like an opportunity to free up some disk space.
@Vincent_Vincent is correct. If the file/folder path contains the text OneDrive, then the file/folder was uploaded to OneDrive, and subject to FOD, as described in the link I provided.
