I am using a Trial version of Scrivener to see how it all works before I buy.
I have only used it only - wrote in only one file and saved it.
I now can’t figure out how to open it. I’ve tried clicking on the file saved in documents (the project file) and it opens Scrivener - comes up with the this is a trial pop-up, I click try and it goes to the opening screen.
I have the options of choosing a blank project, fiction etc.
So I select the bottom part which says open recent, and select my saved file. Nothing happens.
If I click create it’s talking about the new blank project. There are no other options I can see.
So I started a new test project, and once it had opened selected open recent. Again, my file name is there - click it, nothing.
What am I doing wrong?
There was quite a lot of work in that one file, have I lost it somehow?
This seems really odd. Are you perhaps keeping the project in a folder that syncs with the cloud/other computers? Dropbox/Google Drive/Skydrive (or whatever MS is calling it these days)/etc…? Some of these sync processes can mess up a project’s inner workings.
Try another project, save it in another location and see how it works. Maybe poke around to see what is different between the two?
You might re-install Scrivener; I can’t imagine how it might have been damaged in this way, but maybe there’s an issue there?
Good luck! Scrivener is really a great piece of software, but occasionally some people seem to have very odd issues like this.
As Robert intimates, this problem usually indicates a sync error creating multiple copies of files within the project folder–it’s something I’ve seen when there are multiple .scrivx (project) files within the folder, or occasionally when there are other conflicted files.
If you open the project folder in Windows Explorer, do you see any duplicate files (possibly with slightly altered names)? There should be just one “project” file (with the yellow Scrivener icon), and three folders, “Settings”, “Files”, and “Snapshots”.
Inside “Files” should be another folder, “Docs”, and in that you should find all your writing saved as numbered RTF files. Normally you don’t want to access these outside of Scrivener, but you can copy the files to another location and open them in another program to assure yourself your text is safe, even if you’re having some trouble getting the project to open.