[Solved] Project reverted back to version from months ago

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

Hello everyone! Hope your New Year is going well!

I would really appreciate your help because I’m on the verge of tears. I keep my Scrivener project on Dropbox and set up automatic backups to my Windows computer (the default backup location of C:/Users/[My Username]/AppData/Local/Scrivener/Scrivener/Backups). Sadly, I just realized today that my backup setting only retains the last 5 versions.

Today I opened Scrivener for the first time in 10+ days, only to find that everything has reverted back to a version that existed probably 2-3 months ago. The last time I opened Scrivener and found everything to be perfectly fine was on 12/26/14. I know this because I compiled a single chapter into a PDF on that date - and now that I’m comparing the PDF of the polished chapter to the old, terrible draft version that’s on Scrivener right now, I cringe to think of the ~20,000 new words plus countless revisions I’ve now lost.

What I don’t understand is how could this disaster have happened after less than two weeks of not opening Scrivener? My computer never crashed or anything like that, and I’ve only ever accessed Scrivener from one computer, even though I save my project on Dropbox. The only problem I can think of is that my Internet stopped working a few times while I was on Dropbox. However, as of 12/26, everything was still perfectly fine, and I didn’t open Scrivener again until today. Moreover, I’ve been using Scrivener for several months and my Internet has crashed many times, and nothing like this has ever happened before.

By the time I realized that my backup setting only retains the last 5 versions, I hurriedly went to my backup folder, only to find that all 5 of the latest versions were dated today from a few minutes ago!!! Is there any way to undo the damage and find the last 5 versions that were in this folder before today?

Or does anyone have any other ideas on how I can recover everything I’ve lost? Thank you!

2

Tried this dropbox.com/en/help/11 ?

Do you backup your PC…got a copy there?

3

Briar Kit, thank you for your suggestion! I tried it and wasn’t successful, but thank goodness I did manage to recover my files another way! :smiley:

It’s a huge relief now, although there are still a few things that confuse me. My process of recovering the files probably won’t be helpful to anyone else, but I thought I’d just share how I came about it.

I looked at all the previous versions of my Scrivener project on Dropbox, but they were all from today (which had inexplicably reverted back to what I had 2-3 months ago), 1/4/15 (exactly the same), and 10/22/14 (also exactly the same - this was probably the exact date that my version right now came from).

I then remembered that every few months, I manually copy everything from Dropbox onto my computer as a backup just in case. So I first looked at my backup folder with the time stamp 1/4/15. I clicked inside the folder, all excited, but found that my Scrivener project file was dated 1/7/15! Baffled and disappointed, I clicked on my Dropbox backup with the time stamp 10/23/14. I didn’t have any hope left, but discovered that my Scrivener project file inside the folder was dated 1/2/15! I clicked it and discovered that it was the latest version I had saved on 12/26/14. The time stamps really confuse me, since how could the Dropbox files I backed up onto my computer be more up-to-date than the day I copied them over, but I’m not complaining. I guess I’ll use the 1/2/15 version of my Scrivener project from now on! :slight_smile:

Oh, and the lesson I learned - I am selecting “keep all backup files” from now on!