I have scrivener for the mac and I’ve been exploring ia writer in order to use scrivener on my ipad and iphone. Because of the holiday, I’ve had to go city to city and haven’t had access to my computer, so I started writing via ia writer, while doing the scrivener sync with external folder option.
I tested it out and it ran smooth syncing back and forth (while waiting for drop box to upload and download). The next day, I noticed that Scrivener can’t update what I wrote via ia writer. It’s been uploaded to drop box, I can see the files there but Scrivener simply won’t update what I’ve written. I’m not sure what’s wrong.
Also keep in mind I have Scrivener running on a laptop and an iMac, perhaps jumping between the two is a problem as well? I’m not sure how it would be though since my Scrivener files are also on dropbox and they both sure the same project. Thanks!
The only time I’ve heard of anything happening like this is when the clock is off on one or more device or computer. Since modification dates are used to determine which file is newer, that can make a mess of things if one thing is saying its newer edits are in fact older than what is on the computer.
That shouldn’t be a problem, so long as you wait for Dropbox to finish updating a machine before using it, and let it finish updating Dropbox before you shut it down.
I’m referring to the basic clock that the device or computer is set to, as in the day of the year and the time of the day. Ideally they should all be synchronised down to the second, but if you travel a lot or leave network time syncing disabled, they will drift as all clocks do.
They both have the same time set. It was syncing while I was at home last night. This morning it stopped. I didn’t travel anywhere. I checked booth my macbook and iMac, it’s not updating on the scrivener side there.
On my ipad and iphone (the ia writer side), it has my changes. When I add a NEW file in the ia writer side, it doesn’t show up on the scrivener side.
I still have an UPDATED DOCUMENTS tab that showed up after I started using this feature. It’d automatically look for changes when I opened Scrivener.
Okay, I would simplify the equation down to its most basic parts and then gradually add complexity to see where it starts to fail.
A starting point would be to sync the project to the folder, then open any of the text files on the same Mac and change a word or two, then see if that syncs.
If that works, then add Dropbox to the equation. Edit a file on the other Mac and let both sync, then run sync from Scrivener.
Next add your iPad to the equation, but just Dropbox. Use Dropbox.app on the iPad to add a new text file to the draft folder, let it sync, and then try again on the Mac from Scrivener.
If that works, then finally try from Writer again.
I recreated a new sync with scrivener and replaced the changed files to that sync. The SYNC dialogue box automatically came up on scrivener and resync’d the files I overwrote (that were previous not syncing).
Looks like they are… N’Sync
8)
Hopefully that’ll do it. Seems like scrivener just stopped giving me that SYNC dialogue box.
So it stopped syncing again. Also the link you supplied solves a problem between two macs. I haven’t tested it yet because I stopped switching between macs but it doesn’t solve the issue with my iPad and iMac issue. I’m tempted to just continue my project in iA Writer.
Any clue how I can get them to sync? I don’t want to have to remake a sync project in scrivener and overwrite it with the new files from iawriter again.
I can’t say what went wrong, what I know is that there is a failsafe that triggers if the path to the sync folder changes, and that sounds like what you are describing, but I need more detail to be sure. Are you using the MAS version of Scrivener by the way? It has to be more strict about folders, perhaps something Dropbox does is resetting the authorization Scrivener has to work with that folder. You could try adding the folder that contains the sync folder to your permissions list. You’ll find documentation in §7.12 of the user manual, starting on page 72.