I was working on my ipad exclusively for some weeks and when I synched and went to open the project on my macbook it asked which binder structure to use, but the most recent one was a month old. Why does dropbox not want to use the most recent version from my ipad? And more importantly how can I fix this??? I already tried duplicating the project, and I tried backing it up on the ipad, deleting it off dropbox, and then reimporting it… but still every time I try to open it on my computer it stays linked somehow and wants to use that old binder structure.
Ok guys, with the (not so helpful) help of chatGPT and a bit of trial-and-error with that - I finally found the best solution
I zipped the file by saving it to ‘files’ on my ipad (not connected to wifi) - then I sent that to my computer,
keeping a backup of both I deleted the project off of dropbox,
I opened the zip, and right-clicked to ‘show package contents’ in a folder called ‘mobile’ I found a file called binder.mob which I duplicated and renamed to MyProject.scrivx
In the root folder I renamed the file already named MyProject.scrivx to MyProjectConflicted.scrivx and moved the new file also to the root (there was also another conflicted .scrivx file there as well)
When I opened the folder this time it gave me an option to choose a binder from today in addition to the one from a month ago and an older one. after choosing that, the conflicted .scrivx folders disappeared.
Retrospectively, I don’t think deleting everything off dropbox was necessary, I think I could have just made this adjustment to the package contents in dropbox and solved the problem with much less hassle.
EDIT: Yes, no need to delete the project, I had the same issue with a second project and tried just making the adjustment to the package contents in dropbox – problem solved!!!
Note that editing the project’s internal structure directly was probably not necessary and is definitely not recommended.
When Scrivener opens a project with a binder.mob file, it automatically integrates those elements into the main .scrivx file.
So the “safe” solution would have been to unzip the backup, rename the project via Finder to avoid confusion, and then open it in Scrivener as normal. Renaming it would break the link with the existing project, and therefore should resolve the synchronization error.
As for why this happened in the first place, the most common cause would be that at some point you edited the project on the MacBook without first synching the changes from the iPad. This caused Scrivener to think the MacBook version was “newer.”
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In my case renaming the project did not work. One of the first things I tried was sending the zipped file to my Mac and unzipping it and renaming it. But when I opened it, it still wanted to use the old binder structure. I also tried renaming the project, deleting the old one off Dropbox, and opening a new renamed file- it still gave me the old binder problems. I even tried duplicating the project on my iPad and opening the duplicate on the Mac -same thing.
I’m guessing that whatever mistake I made in sinking happened long before my trip where I was only using the iPad for several weeks, so even in the zipped file from the iPad the mistake was already locked in and the new binder was only ever stored in the ‘mobile’ folder as binder.mob, and since it never got stored as a .scrivx file, Scrivner on my computer could not understand it as an option.
Whatever the case modifying the package contents was the only thing that worked and was wayyyyy simpler than all the other things I tried.