Unable to open Scrivener file

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I’ve been writing a full PhD thesis project on Scrivener, so I have a rather big file (3.9MB according to the Finder), that now contains things such as links, web pages and a lot of small pieces of text organized in quite a few folders. The thing is, after working on the project last time Jan. 19, I find that I cannot reopen the file at all.

I get no error message from Scrivener when double clicking the file or dragging it into the icon. I did “Show Package Contents” from the finder on the file, and am able to open the .txt, .rtfd, .webarchive files inside, and even look at .xml and .plist and other files with other programs, even import them into a new project in Scrivener, which seems to be working OK on its own.

I did find a couple of error messages in the console:

1/22/09 4:30:21 PM Scrivener[333] An exception was thrown during execution of an NSScriptCommand…
1/22/09 4:30:21 PM Scrivener[333] *** -[NSKeyedUnarchiver decodeObjectForKey:]: null class for object

which repeat when I try opening the file.

Permissions for the file are correct, and ownership of the archive is set to my user ID. Finder’s File Info says I have custom access (Myself, Group and Everyone are set to Read/Write). I even tried setting 777 permissions on the entire package with chmod -R No change.

When I compare what’s inside the package with what’s inside a new Scrivener file, the only weirdness I can find is: that the binder.scrivproj file appears according to File Info in the Finder to be set to be a “Unix executable file” in the Scrivener file I can’t open, whereas it appears as a simple “Document” file on the new file.

That’s as much as I can see being bizarre inside the file.

I hope you can help me out… I do have an older backup copy of the file, but would rather not lose my latest edits and file organization.

Thanks

Pablo Silva

2

Hi Pablo,

Could you please zip up the file and send it to support AT literatureandlatte DOT com? I can take a look at it to see what is wrong - the error you are seeing would indicate a corrupted binder file, but I want to be sure. Did anything odd happen the last time you had this project open?

Thanks and all the best,
Keith

3

I just sent the file your way, thank you.

Nothing bizarre happened as far as I remember, but as computers are, I couldn’t guarantee that, could I? :smiley:

No crashes, if that’s what you meant.

4

To piggyback onto this post (due to the subject line), I also cannot get into a Scrivener file. When I attempt to open it, I get the two errors attached.

Picture 2.jpg

Followed by:

Picture 3.jpg

Any assistance in opening the file would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Yvonne

5

Zip it up and send it to me and I’ll take a look. That looks as though the file has been corrupted, though. Make sure you give me as much info as you can about what happened (what you were doing on your computer etc, how Scrivener is saved - to local drive or whatever) too.
Best,
Keith