The ‘Search’ function is not working in two of my Scrivener projects. I have checked the settings under the ‘Magnifying glass’ icon, and have tried several variables of the settings in the ‘Search in’, ‘Operator’ and ‘Options’ sections - but nothing shows in the ‘Search Results’ window. It used to work. I have used ‘Save and Rebuild Search Indexes’ several times - with one project it says ‘Scrivener not responding’ and the system crashes. With another Scrivener project, the settings in ‘Search’ are the same (as the two not working) and the ‘Save and Rebuild Search Indexes’ works fine. In ‘About Scrivener’ it says this is version 1.9.16.0 14 Nov 2019. Both projects where the ‘Search’ function is now not working are very large with hundreds of documents and articles saved. Any help is greatly appreciated - thank you! This is the first time I’ve used this forum.
Welcome to the forum!
What version of Windows are you using? (I likely won’t be able to help you personally, but I do know that the version will be important to whoever does. 
)
Thank you - Windows 10 Pro 22H2
I’m afraid I can’t tell you much that’s intelligent. But in my experience, if you are searching in a very large project, Scrivener can be slow. That means, typing in the search box can be delayed and finding results can take a long time. I have never seen this error message, but I have the Mac version 3.
I think I would try to export a small part of the documents to a new project. If the search then works, I would do the same with a further part of documents …
Okay, I tried that - exporting some files to a new project, where yes, the ‘Search’ function did work. So I guess I could export all files step by step to a new project - but that only seems to allow ‘export as files’ (not sure what the other options mean) - and then it seems all my binder folders organisation is lost! Am I missing something here? Thanks for your help - other comments from others?
I’m not well versed on searching slowdowns on larger projects as I’ve not experienced it, but here’s a link to a thread where a user has an 80 gig project. Two comments beneath this the user explains how they handle searching. Maybe this will help?
I wonder - have you considered updating to v. 3 Scrivener? IIRC depending on your purchase date, it may even be a free upgrade.
Well, that’s the level of my ignorance - I had occasionally clicked ‘Check for Updates’ and Scrivener would say “Scrivener is up to date”. So I didn’t realize there was (several) new versions of it! 
So I downloaded the recent one, V.3, and was feeling great to see the improved UI etc. when I undated several small Scrivener projects.
BUT - HUGE PROBLEM now with the two large (just under 1 GB) projects that the ‘search’ function wasn’t working on. It said it would save a backup: these backups are in File Explorer with the new ‘Scrivener’ icon on the left, and the old Scrivener programme won’t open them up as it says I need to update Scrivener.
AND THE NEW ONES WON’T OPEN! They say "RTF Inspector could not load document file ‘such and such’ and then the following:
If this is the first time you have received this message, please restart Windows, then restart Scrivener and try opening this project again.
If you receive this message again for the same file, back up your project, then use File Explorer to copy the file from your Scrivener project at the path above to a safe location and delete the file from the project folder. You can then try opening the copied file in another program and copying and pasting the contents into a new document in your Scrivener project. If this message recurs after doing so, delete the document from the Scrivener project, then paste first into Notepad to strip all formatting and RTF tags and copy and paste from there to Scrivener.
*To prevent losing work, you will not be able to modify or save the affected file in Scrivener *
until you restart.
So I did that with the supposedly corrupt file, deleted it etc. - but when trying again, Scrivener comes up with the same message and another file to supposedly save - it just feels like it’s going to just keep naming another and another file.
I thought discovering about upgrading was the ‘silver lining’ to my previous ‘search function’ problem - NOW I can’t even open my two largest Scrivener projects, either with ‘old version’ or ‘new version’.
Very worried about this, and would appreciate any assistance - thank you!
@AmberV can you help with an update gone awry here please?
@ShamanicEcstatic23 - AmberV is a Scrivener guru and should be able to help.
I am so sorry to hear this! I called in the big-gun to help as it is way beyond my expertise.
In the meantime, be very careful not to overwrite your existing backups and automatic saves.
In other words - say your settings are to only save the 5 most recent backups. You don’t want them to ‘slide off’ your backup list. I would copy your backups into a temp folder on the desktop just in case (someplace outside of any syncing folder)
Also, if you use any cloud syncing/backup that may have some bearing on what’s going on (I don’t use it,) but I suggest you add any of those details to this thread to help others with diagnosis.
Thanks for that advice - I’vehad disasters before - I’ve saved all the projects to the desktop.
Good news - I figured how to open the two large Scrivener projects (704 MB and 869 MB) with the previous version (1.9.16.0) - whew!
The upgraded version (3.1.5.1) updates and opens up smaller projects (e.g. 17 MB).
But when I try to open up the two larger ones I used to get ‘Search Index not fully loaded’ and then the following:
*RTF Inspector could not load document file: "C:/Users/User/OneDrive/Documents/OneDrive/2023 DOCS & PROJECTS/‘project name’/‘file name’
If this is the first time you have received this message, please restart Windows, then restart Scrivener and try opening this project again.
If you receive this message again for the same file, back up your project, then use File Explorer to copy the file from your Scrivener project at the path above to a safe location and delete the file from the project folder. You can then try opening the copied file in another program and copying and pasting the contents into a new document in your Scrivener project. If this message recurs after doing so, delete the document from the Scrivener project, then paste first into Notepad to strip all formatting and RTF tags and copy and paste from there to Scrivener.
*To prevent losing work, you will not be able to modify or save the affected file in Scrivener *
until you restart.
I tried this advice - deleting the file, but when trying to open again, it would name another file -that was supposedly corrupt? i feel it’s going to just name another and another file.
But now - I get the first message and then the system just crashes.
Is there something I can do using the copy I can open in the previous version - to export/convert or something - so the latest version will open them?
I’m now trying to delete big sections of a copy of one of the projects to make it smaller, and then see if Scrivener v.3 will open it.
I’musing Windows 10. The laptop is Intel(R) Core™ i5-4210M CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.60 GHz with 8 GB RAM, 64-bit. Is the machine not up to it?
Thanks for your help. At least after a couple of daunting hours I at least know I can open these two projects in the earlier version.
You’re welcome! I am very glad you were able to open them again. (Sigh of relief!)
Until someone else chimes in, search the forum for OneDrive + windows . It’s not my forte, but because of the way Windows handles a project as many separate files, it’s fairly common to see problems with cloud syncing unzipped files - among other things.
Like @FamilyPuzzleSolver I can’t give you the definitive answer, but my suspicions are around OneDrive not behaving as you expect.
Before going much further I recommend you copy (or even move?) all your Scrivener projects from a OneDrive synced folder to the local disk, say ~/Documents/Scrivener. And make sure everything gets copied/moved even if OneDrive wants to keep things “online” to “help” you or something.
Even if this is not the final solution, getting rid of OneDrive for these Scrivener files is removing at least one or more variables.
L&L has some FAQ’s on sync services at Using Scrivener with Cloud-Sync Services / Cloud Syncing / Knowledge Base - Literature and Latte Support
OneDrive, or potentially anti-virus software blocking Scrivener from reading its own files, is another common problem you see around here. I don’t know a huge amount of actual Windows troubleshooting though, like what to do when a program can’t work with its files level of operation. I just run the Windows version on Linux.