Hello all, thank you for your time. I’ve combed through the forums and haven’t found the exact answer I’m looking for. If I’ve missed the answer already posted, I apologize. I’m new here.
I own four copies of Scrivener (iPhone, iPad on a different apple ID, Mac desktop, and Win10). Right now, I’m trying to get my Windows 10 laptop to sync with my Windows 10 desktop via OneDrive.
My goal is that I can write a chapter on here, my laptop, and save it so that I can move to my office and pick up where I left off on my desktop. The laptop isn’t used as much but I like the portability when I’m dragged off to visit family I don’t care for as I can use some of the bottled-up rage and repressed emotions as fuel for my writing.
Is this possible with OneDrive–so that when I click “Save” on one device, it has the save file where I can easily load it into the other device?
If this isn’t possible or if there’s an easier way, please let me know. I tried DropBox once but I think I did it wrong because one device had a filename ending with an x, and wouldn’t open the file on the other device.
Thanks for your time and any help with this. I’m just trying to make it easier for me to keep writing and finish this book.
First, the project is a folder with potentially hundreds or thousands of files. It’s not just a single file.
Secondly, if you couldn’t make it work with Dropbox, you’ll probably have the same kind of problem with Onedrive because they both function in roughly the same way. You have the project folder on one PC. You also have an app for the specified cloud service running on the PC. That app uploads your project files to the cloud server. You have the same cloud app running on the other PC, and that app downloads the files from the cloud server to that second PC. In both cases, you need to give the cloud apps time to finish all the uploading and downloading because when you try to open a project in Scrivener, all project files must be present on the hard drive of your PC.
The file with the x, was it the .scrivx file? That’s the file that holds all information about the content files in the project. The project folder has the suffix .scriv
You need the whole folder.
If you want to sync iPhone and iPad with your PCs, you need to use Dropbox.
Thank you very much for your reply! I did the tutorial at the end of last year. I’d started writing proficiently until losing my son in March, and my mother in July. A bit derailed. I’m going to run through it again. But I greatly appreciate your feedback! I’ll find where the fold is that contains the entire save, and set it up to backup to either OneDrive or DropBox. And then I reckon I open the folder, find the saved file and open that on the other computer? Am I understanding it right? Save on computer 1, copy entire folder to OneDrive, give it time to transfer over, open on computer 2, save, copy entire folder to OneDrive etc?
No.
Firat, Save and Backup are not the same thing.
Save is where you put your project when you created it. When working on a project, Scrivener automatically Saves every rime you stop writing for a few seconds. You never have ro save manually.
Bckup is the copy Scrivener makes every time you close the project (and every time you make a manual Save, if you have ticked that box in Tools ->Options -> Backup). They are copies of older versions of the project and you usually don’t need or jse them. They are for safe keeping if your live project is corrupted.
About cloud services, they all work the same way. (roughly). You install an app, the app create a dolder on your hard drive with the name of the cloud service. Everything you save in that folder is automatically synced with the cloud server. So if you save the project in a subfolder of the Onedrive folder, the Onedrive app will automatically upload it to the Onedrive server, provided that you give it enough time. And the same procedure on the other PC. Install the Onedrive app. Let it download everything from the Onedrive server before you try to open a Scrivener project.
Omce the system is running on both PCs it won’t take long to upload or download the changed file, but it may take seconds or minutes. And Dropbox is very reliable when it comes to showing if everything is synced. Other cloud services less so, and iCloud is the worst.
And if you want to use iOS Scrivener you need to use Dropbox.