I have been using Ulysses for several months and have decided to purchase Scrivener 3 MacOS. I really love Ulysses’ sync feature because it’s unobtrusive and just works. But there’s features in Scrivener that I miss. I’m going to be using a MBA and a Mac mini. Never at the same time. I want to be sure that regardless of where I work, my changes get uploaded to Dropbox and to the two computers.
I’ve searched the forums and read through the posts about Dropbox syncing . But I’m still a little apprehensive. I backed up my Dropbox files to a jump drive. So I have a clean slate.
Can someone please tell me the steps I need to follow to set up my syncing to Dropbox to ensure I don’t lose or corrupt my files?
How should I set up my MBA and Mini?
Do I create a folder on Dropbox called “Scrivener” then create different folders for each project or let each project live inside the main “Scrivener” folder, or should I not create a folder at all?
I had been using Scrivener for Windows for some time but I had wanted to write on my iPad and that meant I needed Dropbox. All the syncing issued I read about regarding Scrivener and Dropbox convinced me to look elsewhere. That’s when I found Ulysses and moved away from Scrivener. Since then, I have purchased a Mac mini and MBA. I no longer use the iPad to write, I use the MBA for remote work instead. Now that I’ve gone whole hog on Apple products, I’d like to come back to Scrivener. In other words, I want to come home. Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
Install the Dropbox software on both systems. It will create a location in Finder, where you can create whatever subfolders you like. Make sure both systems are using the same Dropbox account.
Move the project(s) you want to synchronize to that location.
The initial upload may take some time, depending on project size. While you wait, read this, on best practices to reduce the risk of synchronization errors: scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb … c-services
Done.
(You only need to set up a specific Scrivener folder if you’re synchronizing with iOS Scrivener.)
One or two other questions regarding best practices. Pretend you are starting Scrivener from scratch.
You create your first Scrivener project. Do you save it to your Dropbox folder in the root directory? Or is it better to first create a folder named after this project in the Dropbox root directory?
I believe I have made an error. I created a Scrivener folder under my Documents folder, then had Scrivener to Backup to a Scrivener folder I created on the Dropbox root. I finally purchased a Scrivener license and installed it on my Mini. I tried to find my project but all I saw were the 5 zip files from backups.
Before I get too far into this, I think I need to straighten all this out.
Don’t confuse your backups with your live projects. They are different and, in my opinion, should be stored in different places. For example, if you store the live projects in Dropbox, I’d recommend storing the backups either with a different cloud service or on the local drive. The reason is that you don’t want a Dropbox issue to be able to wipe out both the projects and the backups.
You can locate all projects on your system by searching for .scriv files. Then you can use Finder to move them to whatever location you prefer. (Do this with Scrivener closed.)
Whether to put the projects in the Dropbox folder or a subfolder is entirely up to you. Scrivener doesn’t care. Dropbox might care, in that you can selectively synchronize only some folders on some systems. But from Scrivener’s point of view it’s just looking at a location on the local drive.