Every time I open a saved Scrivener file, I get a message that my file “is stored inside its own automatic backups folder. This could potentially result in data loss in the event of an automatic backup trying to overwrite the current project file. It is therefore strongly recommended that you close the project and move it to a different location.”
Why? I just save it the regular way before closing the file: File --> Save or CNTRL + S.
Plus every time I update the file it creates a brand new zip file. Why is saving so complicated?
Oh sadly I’m still getting that message, plus my copies of the exact same file have multiplied!! It seems like it is automatically creating backups every time I close it. But I just want to save it…like you do in word?? Where the latest updates get automatically saved, and you don’t end up with 500 files that have the same name???
You don’t have to “save it the regular way”. Scrivener does that automatically, all the time, as soon as you stop writing a few seconds. The zip-file is an automatic backup, a copy of the last version created by Scrivener every time you close the project or (if that tickbox is ticked) when you manually save it. So if your project is corrupted you can restore from the automatic backup and only lose the last things you wrote.
The system is set up to only save the last 5 or 10 backups or so. The older ones are deleted. But if you save the project in the same folder where you have your backups, Scrivener won’t dare to delete anything for fear of destroying the live project, so you end up with an unlimited(!) number of backups.
Create a dedicated folder for all your backups (set it up in Preferences -> Backups) and another dedicated folder for your live project(s).
This is not Word, this is Scrivener, a much smarter system.
When you are done, just close the project. It is already saved, automatically, by Scrivener itself.
