I tend to share files back and forth (saved via Dropbox) between Scrivener on my Mac and on my Windows computer inthe office. Have done this for some time, and now using the new Mac Scrivener 3 and Windows Beta Scrivener 3 have found odd behavior with doing this. I am able to export as a .zip backup from my Mac and open in Windows Scrivener 3 Beta, but not the other way around. I can output as a .zip from Windows, but my Mac Scrivener 3 us not able to open it.
I do find that when I save directly onto Dropbox that I can open the files across platforms (something I was not able to do with the previous version of Scrivener on Mac and Windows).
I prefer backing up as a zip as the file is a bit smaller and I know I have everything in one file.
I searched for this here, but could not find it here. Anybody else experience this?
I’m new to Scrivener and I would like alternate between a PC and a MAC book. I would like to keep my writings on an external hard drive that I can then work on with whichever computer I am using. When I am home, the PC. When I am away, the MAC book. Can I do that??
Are you saying that you can open the .zip backup in Windows 3 Beta? Or have you missed out the statement that you’re unzipping it first. It seems that in Windows you can examine the contents of a .zip file, but I didn’t think you could open it in Scrivener without unzipping it. The Mac version certainly can’t do that.
That’s very odd; I’ve been sharing projects with a Windows with a Windows using collaborator for several years using Dropbox and when that was blocked in China using Cubby and now Sync without any problems at all, so I don’t know what you’ve been doing. I still use Mac 2.8 with her and she has Windows 1,9.x
I haven’t tried with .zips. I do have Windows 2.902 running under CrossOver as a test bed for when I can encourage her to upgrade to v.3, so if I can find time, I’ll give it a go. But in the meantime, someone else might come along to test it out.
I am able to open the zip on the Windows beta, it is just that I cannot open or unzip the Windows Beta zip file on my Mac. This did not happen with the older version of Windows when zipping a scriv file and unzipping on a Mac.
I’ve found that some windows-generated .zip files (not sure which program does this) won’t open by normal means on the Mac. I did find that the “unzip” command in the Terminal will work when the finder interface fails.
See if this works: Open Terminal, and type “unzip” plus a space. Then drag the zipped Scrivener project into the Terminal window, which should paste in the path and filename onto the line after "unzip ". Hit enter, and hopefully you’ll see a usable Scrivener project appear in the finder.