My ten-year-old MacBookPro finally died yesterday, and I bought a refurbished 2019 iMac to replace it. The MBP had maxed out at Catalina, while the iMac came with Monterey pre-installed. I used the Migration Assistant to transfer everything.
My workflow includes both MacOS and iOS versions of Scrivener using Dropbox. I have a “Scrivener WIPs” folder in Dropbox where I keep my working .scriv projects. When I open Scrivener on the new(ish) iMac, I get a couple of errors:
zero data length
Could not read mobile data
I get the option to Close or Continue. When I continue, the zero data length pops up again, then I get the option to Sync. That gives me another zero data length error.
Is this the source of the problem I’m seeing? Or is there some other issue? If it is the Dropbox issue, I assume I have to wait until the issue is resolved by them. But if you have other suggestions, please let me know.
The one piece of good news for me in all this is I happen to be between drafts on a couple of projects, waiting for notes from beta readers, so it’s not super urgent that I get it fixed immediately. But those notes will be in soon. If I need to abandon Dropbox, even temporarily, do I have other options? Will iCloud work, or is that still not recommended?
I’ve not had any problems with Dropbox (or Scivener) in all previous versions of macOS … now at 12.3.1
I recommend you log in to your Dropbox account with a browser and see if you can see your Scrivener files where you think they should be (“Scrivener WIPS”). Then install and use the Dropbox app on the Mac and check with Finder that they are in the “~\Dropbox\Scrivener WIPS” folder.
If no at any step … debug.
If yes, then I suspect if you then open you project in Scrivener in the Dropbox location it will all work.
I use an Intel iMac and an M1 MBA both running Monterey, currently 12.3.1 and have not had any trouble with Dropbox. Make sure the project is downloaded onto your iMac, not only available online, as that article says.
The issue was, in fact, Dropbox. The Dropbox app is installed and running, and apparently syncing. After checking via browser that the files were where I expected them and attempting to open them once again with the same results, I did a test.
I created a new Scrivener document and attempted to save in my Scrivener WIPs folder. This time, the zero data error flashed briefly, then a Dropbox popup appeared telling me that there was an issue with Monterey 12.3 in which files set as “online only” appear as have a zero data size to applications that try to open them. By going to the Finder, right clicking on Scrivener WIPs, and then selecting “Make available offline,” the problem goes away. I just have to allow Dropbox to sync before opening files.
What’s curious is all my Dropbox folders were set to “Available offline” except Scrivener WIPs. On my old computer, I know the setting was to store locally as I frequently write with Freedom turned on and so have no internet access for online only files.
I can only assume that during the migration from the old computer to the new, the folder setting inexplicably was set to online only. Chalk it up to computer weirdness.
The good news everything is behaving now. I have some Conflicts to resolve in one project, but they’re minor—the result of me trying to test the syncing—so I can resolve them easily.
Also, that Dropbox popup noted that they’re working on a fix of the online-only “zero data” issue.