Snapshots on MacOS

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

Despite being a fairly long time user of Scriv, Snapshots are not a feature I’ve needed to use.

However having recently done a couple of them I found they are not persistent and vanish after a save. I also did some Mac security updates so this may have had an effect.

Can someone tell me if they are supposed to remain across severall saves/reboots/whatever? Fortunately I can call on a backup but using the snapshot would have been simpler.

Mac Mini Intel. MacOS Ventura 13.6.4 Scriv 3.3.6

2

I take quite a few snapshots. They only disappear when I actively delete them. In any case, I have never noticed anything else.

3

Sounds as though it’s user error on my part then, but I can’t think of any reason it should happen. I’ll have a play around and see what happens.

Thanks for the reply.

4

The two things I would look into:

  1. Snapshots are item specific of course. Click on a folder and if nothing is selected in the corkboard/outliner, you’ll see the folder’s snapshot list. Click on a card in the corkboard and you’ll see its list. Click back on the folder later with the mistaken expectation of the folder being inspected, and you might be lead to believe you lost the folder snapshots. That is just one scenario of course, but all reasons to pay attention to the little header at the top of the inspector and double-check that what you’re inspecting is what you thought you were.
  2. Use the Documents ▸ Snapshots ▸ Show Snapshots Manager menu command. You will find every snapshot in the project listed here, associated with the binder item it is related to. Right-click on any to “Reveal in Binder”. Maybe there are duplicates of the content in the binder, accidental or no, and you selected the wrong one.

Lastly one could dig around in the Snapshots subfolder of the project package itself in Finder, and read through the .rtf files. If you come across something in there that isn’t listed in the Snapshots Manager, that soundsl ike a bug of some sort to me, and worth further investigation.

5

Thank you very much for this explanation of how snapshots work. As I said in my OP I’ve not had cause to use them in the past.

You were absolutely correct - the snapshot was there, I was simply looking in the wrong places.

One point. If I view a snapshot in the Snapshot manager window, can I highlight a section of the text and roll back just that highlighted section? Or, is it the whole of the snapshot only?

1 Like
6

The roll-back feature is always going to restore the entire state (and if you try it, you’ll get a warning and request to snapshot the current state before doing so, just in case that isn’t what you really wanted).

If you want a partial “roll-back”, you were already halfway there. :slight_smile: Copy the highlighted section, and then select the parts you want to restore over in the editor and Paste.

7

I thiught that would be the case.

If you want a partial “roll-back”, you were already halfway there. :slight_smile: Copy the highlighted section, and then select the parts you want to restore over in the editor and Paste.

That’s good to know. Paste using “paste & match style” would be the appropriate one here… Looking at the snapshot I would guess that doing this would also put back the snapshotted citations.