Okay, I’m an author. I have an author friend. She and I both have scriv. She has the mac and I have windows. (not sure this matters) We are wanting to send scriv files back and forth for a collaboration project. Is there a way to do this without compiling to a word doc? just trying to save a step.
Would it be a we need to share a file location like a Dropbox so we both can access the file? Or because we are mac and windows we can’t send/share the file and have to do the word compile to send? I know there has to be a simple way to send scriv files but I’ve not figured it out yet. So came to ask here. doing a search got me nothing. I’m crud at searching. probably its the terms I’m using. tech is not my forte. Any help is appreciated. TYIA
File → Backup Up… → Backup Up to… → Back up as ZIP file.
Send this file to her (e.g. as an email attachment). Done. Most bulletproof way.
Of course you could just store the project in a shared Dropbox folder or something, but this requires more discipline / coordination, not opening it on multiple devices at the same time and such.
Windows / Mac doesn’t matter as long as it’s the same major version (e.g. 3.x). You may run into minor font issues sometimes, but nothing serious.
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The answer is to put the project(s) in a shared folder on Drobox, Box, or other similar cloud service apart from Google (which has a history of corrupting Scrivener projects) or iCloud, which I’m not sure plays well with Windows. Dropbox is the most often cited. That said:
- You cannot both be working on the same project at the same time, so you’ll need to schedule access;
- Both of you must make sure that the project and all its files are available offline at all times (you see it on your Mac as a single file; she sees it on Windows as a folder projectname.scriv containing files and more folders);
- Both of you set the project to be backed up on opening and closing, so that you always each of you have access to its state before you started working on it and when you finished… to that end set your number of backups to at least 25;
- Make good use of snapshots before you change any existing text.
- Choose a pretty bulletproof font like Times New Roman; it may be boring but usually works without problems between Mac and Windows.
I have been working with a Windows-using collaborator for about 15 years, though we have often had the advantage of being 8 hours apart, making access easier to manage. Until recently, for technical reasons (i.e. Great Firewall of China), we have been using Sync, rather than Dropbox, though Sync has become a bit more problematic of late.
You can use the zip-file method @November_Sierra recommends, but if you do that, you’ll both have to be very careful not to end up with a whole string of projects with virtually the same name and so end up working on the wrong one (a common source of “Scrivener has eaten what I typed recently” posts!).
Both of you read the knowledge base articles on cloud sync’ing, talk it over with your friend and come back. There are lots of us here with experience of different ways of doing it, who are willing to help.
Mark
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You might also want to read the section in the manual on sharing projects with the Import and Merge feature. (Section 5.3.2 in the Mac manual.) That requires a little more human intervention than synchronization, but is probably safer.
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you guys are awesome. know there was a way. its was just a matter of asking. Thanks everyone! sending this info and we are both gonna look that manual stuff up now. If there are any other recs please keep them coming. We live a mile apart so we’ll def have to schedule access times, which is not a big deal.
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I would also suggest a writing schedule for each of you . Or text when start and close to make sure not working on it at the same time. So if friend signs on you don’t work on it till they sign off by text as added safe quard. Also discuss how you want to tag text you write with labels, keywords, comments, so both tagging with metadata the same way to make project searches by each of you more efficient.
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I would just add one more detail to your backup workflow- be sure to check the “add date” option to avoid duplicate names in your backups. 
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Yes, agree, but can see date as a column (date modified) in detail view which makes the function redundant at least in windows.
In my experience, panicked people who are trying to restore from a backup tend to not look at anything other than the file name.
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