I have Scrivener on two computers. Right now it’s working fine on one of them.
However, on my second computer I have a strange problem.
I created a zip-file of a current project, e-mailed it to myself – and on the second computer, seem to have hit a few wrong keys – and now – SOME OF THE FILES, but NOT ALL OF THEM, can’t be read.
Interestingly, the files that can’t be read are the few files in which the Synopsis portion is empty.
It’s as if, on my second computer, the MAIN (Center) screen is reading only the synopsis portion of these few files.
I have no idea what is going on.
Am I being clear about the problem? If not, I will write more.
Note – on my other computer, the exact same file works fine and ALL the individual files are readable.
Some of the files have information in the synopsis category – but NOT in the middle screen (Main Document).
So it’s as if SOME of my files are NOT READING THE MAIN TEXT portion.
Does anyone know why this might happen? It’s as if I’ve inadvertently BLOCKED OFF the Main Text of several files – and am only getting a WHITE BLANK SCREEN for these files instead.
This sounds like you have a font issue. You should check your system fonts using Font Book. Look for grayed out fonts and duplicates. (To test this, highlight the blank portion of one selection and switch the font to the font you are using for portions that you can see.)
Did you accidentally switch into Outliner view? This ought to reset to editor view when you select files, but maybe you have your preferences set up so it does not. Click on one of the “empty” documents in the Binder, and then click the Outliner button in the toolbar, or use the View/Outliner menu item. Does that fix it? It almost sounds like you have Outliner, and only the synopsis column enabled.
If that wasn’t the problem, let’s try one thing that might clear it up.
First, close Scrivener. Then find the project on the second computer that is causing issues, using the Finder. Ctrl-click on the project file and select “Show Package Contents”. You should see a bunch of files, scroll down until you find one called “ui.xml” and move that to the Trash. Close this window, and double-click on the project file to load it. You’ll get a warning, which you can ignore. The entire window will be reset to what a default project looks like, but otherwise everything else should be intact. That UI file just saves the stuff you have opened, whether or not splits are visible, and that sort of thing.
The next thing to try would be resetting your preferences, if you need help with that let me know.
I tried all the suggestions – still not working.
It seems as if some data is being lost when the file is being compressed. Is that possible? When I re-open the zip-file even on my first computer it is still missing data.
That’s very unlikely. If a ZIP file gets corrupted in transfer over the Internet, it typically won’t even uncompress. What I would try doing is zipping the original, the one that works, again and then send it and see if that works. It might be the the file got damaged in transfer, it’s unusual these days, but it’s still possible.
Oh, and how are you zipping them? Are you using Scrivener’s “Backup Project To” feature with the archive option turned on? That’s probably the safest way to do it.
I tried that Scrivener zip-file method you suggested-- and it worked! I hadn’t been using that method before – was simply zipping my files via some command on my Macbook.
When I e-mailed the new Scrivener zip-file to my other computer it opened with all the documents intact.
So while I still don’t quite understand what happened before, I believe that for the moment the problem has been dealt with.
Thank you all for your quick and helpful responses This is a great board (befitting a great program).
The only real practical difference between the two methods is that the Scrivener one lets you make backups and keep working, while with the other method you have to make sure the project is closed first—and that is also why it is a touch safer to use the backup method as it is sometimes easy to forget to close everything first. Maybe that’s even what happened this time around.
