I’m new to both Scrivener and Macs, so my head is about to explode with all I’m learning. I’ll be using Scrivener on both my desktop and laptop. Can someone tell me the best way to switch between computers and have all the info on both…I’m hoping this is possible.
Your options are fairly wide open, since your projects are just like files on your computer. Any method you would use to share or copy files between your laptop and desktop is applicable to your Scrivener project. More specifically you’ll want to treat it like you would a folder of items you keep between computers, because while it may look and act like a file, it really is a folder with lots of files inside of it. Zip archival can be a good way to move lots of files between computers, especially if WiFi is involved since compression will reduce how long it takes for the files to copy.
There are some other things you might be interested in keep up to date between computers as well, such as your settings. Note that in the Preferences panel, there is a “Manage” drop-down menu at the bottom. Use this to save your settings to a file, which can then be transferred to another computer and loaded using its corresponding Manage menu. Most everything else is saved into the project’s settings, and so they will be transferred automatically when the project is transferred. Most other things are all located in the Scrivener’s support folder, which you can get at from the main Scrivener menu, “Reveal Support Folder in Finder”. There you can copy custom templates, compile presets, and other things you create.
Some people like to use the Internet to keep their computers up to date, rather than home networks. I don’t recommend using iDisk unless you always use zip compression. SugarSync, Dropbox, and others along those lines are fairly safe to use, but do read §13.6 in the user manual PDF if you intend to actually work off of .scriv projects in these sorts of folders, rather than just use them as a “super floppy disk”. There are a few gotchas to watch out for.