Hello,
I currently have Scrivener on both my Mac and Windows PC. After not using the Windows version for quite some time, I updated to the latest version and tried to open my project on Windows. I keep getting the ‘new project’ window and when I try to open from ‘open existing project,’ nothing happens.
I’m currently running Windows 7.
Thank you!
Usually this indicates a conflicted or duplicate file within the project folder, something that could happen through a failed Dropbox sync or the like. Make a zipped backup of your project’s .scriv folder, then root through it for any files with “conflicted” or such in the name (it may differ depending on the service you’re using to keep the project up to date between machines) or for multiple project .scrivx files (the one with the yellow Scrivener icon that you click on to open the project). Move out any of these to your Desktop or a temporary folder outside the project, then try opening the project again. If that works, you can re-import any document files that you may have removed to compare with the one still in the project, if it was a case of a sync conflict. In the case of multiple .scrivx files, I’d leave the one that is newer (you can view the modified date within Windows Explorer) and then go through your binder within Scrivener to ensure the structure and meta-data is as you expect.
Thanks so much for your help - I found the conflicted file and removed it, and now I’m all set! 
This also happened to me when I “Saved as” in the same folder, even though I gave the file a new name. The Mac version has no confusion, but the PC version couldn’t open it until I moved one of the versions out of the folder. Perhaps this should be treated as a bug?
Could you elaborate? Where are you saving the file? There should be no conflict in having two Scrivener projects saved in the same parent directory, but if you had managed to save a Scrivener project inside another project’s folder, that would cause problems.
Yes, it was the latter because “Save as” in the Mac defaults to the same directory as the file originates. Now that I know this, I can work around it, but it caused me some distress for a few days.
This still doesn’t sound right though. If I have a Scrivener project “Alpha.scriv” saved on my Mac at ~/Dropbox/Projects/ and then use Save As to create a new “Beta.scriv” in that same Projects folder, it should not prevent either project from opening on Mac or Windows. I’m assuming since you’re working cross platform that there’s some sort of sync folder involved. Where exactly are the projects saved and accessed from on Windows, and what happens when you try to load it–nothing? Scrivener opens an empty project? This isn’t a normal problem, so I’m trying to figure out what’s specific to your case that’s causing a failure.
I use Google Drive. However, when I zip as recommended above, no conflict files appear. Are there known issues with Google Drive?
Oh, there’s your problem… The official FAQ has a section on cloud syncing, and there’s a specific advisory against putting ‘live’ projects into Google Drive: scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/cloud-syncing
Dropbox plays nice with scrivener projects, and is likely to be the first cloud solution for the future iOS version of Scrivener, if that matters at all to you.
Too bad there’s no practical and universal way to check if a project has been saved to a synchronized folder…