Since I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year I thought it would be safe to upgrade Scrivener. Seems I was dead wrong.
All my chapter names are gone. All my statuses and custom labels. And all my notes. In every version file except for one.
And all this without an OS upgrade to my Mac. Just the upgrade to Scrivener.
I’ve tried reverting to a previous version (from Dropbox) saved prior to the upgrade but no love. Has anyone else had this problem? Is there a way to get that info back?
Scrivener’s automatic backups can be found by going to Scrivener -> Preferences -> Backups and opening the backup folder in Finder.
However, the upgrade from 3.1.2 to 3.1.4 should be completely non-destructive. Nothing has changed that would affect the contents of your projects in such a dramatic way. It is likely that something else is going on.
You mention that the projects are synchronized to Dropbox. What other devices have access to them, if any? Are you using any other synchronization services?
When you say that chapter names are gone, do you mean that the items in the Binder are now untitled? Something else?
Thank you for this! A huge help. The backup included all my notes and statuses!
No other devices. No other services besides Dropbox.
Easier to show than tell. Chapter folders were still there. Scene names and all custom labels and statuses were completely blown out.
after-upgrade.png is what the “current” version of my work looks like after the upgrade to 3.1.4.
That is, there is no mechanism in Scrivener that will rename all of the items in your Binder without human intervention.
It’s hard to say without more information, but my best guess would be that you inadvertently opened an older or otherwise different version of the project than you expected.
I’m not sure how that would be possible. I launched scrivener from the Mac menu bar and selected my file from the recent projects dropdown.
The .scrivx file I opened on my machine had the same last updated date in finder as the export to Word I used to print a hard copy. I haven’t touched it since July when it was the “current” version of my WiP.
This is definitely not something I did. Since I have a back up and now know where the backups are that’s all that matters. Next time I’ll make sure my backup is good before I upgrade.
That said, I suggest L&L get out of the habit of releasing upgrades in late-October or the first bit of November. It’s as if you don’t know that NaNoWriMo is a thing people are already stressing over at that time of year, which seems totally disingenuous to me.
Thank you again for the help. I do appreciate it and the speed with which you responded.
That’s a potential point of confusion. Although in theory it should only list the most recent version of the project, there are rare cases where the list gets lost, or somehow reverts to an older state. Changing the state of the system (upgrading software, etc.) is a likely point of failure in this infrastructure.
If you ever feel like software loaded something old, or it doesn’t look right, check its location by Command-clicking on the title bar. You may find indeed it’s an old copy in a backup folder or something that you set aside. In Scrivener we even have a command to help, File ▸ Show Project in Finder. I’ve had that happen to me a few times—not so much in Scrivener because I adhere to a strict protocol of only keeping one “live” copy of any project around—all backups and old revisions are zipped.
This is usually around when Apple releases a new version of macOS, and it is often loaded with bugs and broken mechanisms that need to be patched up with a compatibility fix or two. I’m afraid we cannot avoid that.
You on the other hand can—the release notes for 3.1.4 mainly concern 10.15. Honestly if I were just some person out there on 10.13, I probably would have clicked the “skip this update” button for 3.1.4. I do that all of the time with software if the release notes do not pertain to me or only fix things on the newer Macs.
Which is exactly what I did last year when I was participating in NaNoWriMo. Figured since I would now be two updates behind maybe it was time to actually do one of them.
This is your project. Double click on Test, and it will open in Scrivener.
It sounds as though when you get to the above screen, you are control-clicking (or right-clicking with mouse) on Test, and then choosing ‘Show Package Contents’ to get to the following view:
You should never do this, or try to open the project using the .scrivx file. I don’t know the technicalities, but the .scrivx file is a (very important) component of your project, but not the whole project.
I personally prefer to use the recent projects list to launch my projects, but note AmberV’s comments above. The best alternative, I think, is to launch Scrivener, and then navigate to your project using the File->Open… command (CMD-O).
Yes it is. It sounds as if you did two different things.
opened an older project using the recents list, possibly corrupted by the upgrade as L&L suggested
looked at the current project using Finder
If things look weird using the recents list, open the project directly, either using File → Open like Kinsey suggests, or by identifying the project in Finder and double-clicking it.
This may well be a issue with Finder’s default view for new windows, the “Recents” list. There is (last I heard anyway) a longstanding bug with that lister in that, unlike all other searching tools that I’m aware of on the Mac, it outputs internal storage files from package formats. So if you use DEVONthink, Scrivener or any tool that works like this, the “Recents” list will often be quite useless, spammed with hundreds of internal files—including the .scrivx I believe.
I’m kind of going off of hearsay and old screenshots though. I have Spotlight disabled on my system, so this view doesn’t even work for me.
Technical stuff aside, one other useful tip: with the right copy of the project open, use the File ▸ Add Project to Favorites menu command. This will pin it to the Favorites submenu right above it. Unless you move your projects around on the disk a lot, you can trust that list above anything else, and unlike the recent list, it won’t drop old entries. It’s entirely up to you what goes into that list, and you can keep things there for as many years as you like.
Just to cover all of the possibilities, I wanted to make sure that you didn’t just download the .scrivx file from dropbox.com via your web browser… did you? If so, that would mimic some of your issues. Not the titles issue, but definitely the lack of notes and text.
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