strange problem with Mac/windows/dropbox three-way

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I had been sharing a scriv project between a mac (10.6.8) and a pc (ancient winxp) via dropbox. What I would do is edit a copy on my mac, copy it to dropbox, copy from dropbox on my pc at work to another location and work on it there. I’d then send it home the same way by copying to dropbox and copying from dropbox at home.

I like it that way because then I don’t have to worry about file corruptions via dropbox.

That worked for a couple of years when it was two macs and dropbox involved. Now I’ve got a mac at home and pc at work. It worked fine that way for a couple of days, and then one day my pc couldn’t open the scriv file anymore.

The mac could still open it no prob.

I tried zipping the scriv file before dropping it into dropbox, and then taking it out of dropbox onto my pc and unzipping it there. Still no go. PC scriv can’t open it.

I don’t know what to make of this situation.

p.s. sure glad scriv uses .rtf for text files, I could still use my files, just not in scriviner.

Any suggestions would be great.

Thank you!

2

The first thing I would check is to make sure you are up to date on both machines to avoid running into any old bugs.

Be careful with that. These files are not there for editing directly, but only as a last resort (say if you lose access to Scrivener for an indeterminate amount of time). Editing them directly could cause damage to the project (it depends on how many features you use, and your search index will lose integrity in all cases, but that’s easy to refresh on the Mac by holding down the Option key on the File menu and selecting “Save and Rebuild Search Indexes”).

As for the project itself, could you attach a copy of it to an e-mail and send it to tech support? It would help us know better what went wrong.