Sorry for opening a new thread, I know there’s another one open on the same issue. Seeing as it is unanswered, I’m opening a new one in hopes for a quick answer.
I have a quite large document that I have been working with on my Mac for years, saving and editing over time.
From time to time I also edit it on my iPad, syncing through Dropbox.
This has worked flawlessly until today.
Having worked on my iPad today, trying to sync the material to Dropbox — Scrivener (iOS) crashes without any kind of message,
I am quite desperate to get my material across to my Mac (and to not lose any material in the process).
It does feel a bit flaky, however — I obviously had to KEEP the ipad versions, right? In order to sync it back later?
My first worry is the fact that project titles are shown in a quite large font — at least I can’t find a way to shrink the font size — which means that my titles are truncated and knowing which ones to move back to the dropbox section feels a bit unsecure.
May I suggest a setting for font size?
But what’s even more worrying is that after moving that crucial document that I wanted to save, now wanting to delete all the ipad-only duplicates, Scrivener tells me that one or more of the duplicates are being used on another device.
This feels counter-intuitive, since according to the list they are only present onboard the internal storage on my iPad.
But it still scares me from deleting them.
So: Why does Scrivener claim onboard files only are open elsewhere?
And what caused the Scrivener crashing issue to begin with, and how can I avoid it?
Not really comfortable with the result so far, but I hope I’ll be able to figure out what files are the latest and which ones I can delete…
Well, if it were me, I would move all of the projects to the Dropbox area, synchronize them with my iMac, and use its full-sized interface to figure out which is which. Then I’d delete the ones I didn’t want and synchronize everything else back to the iPad.
The “project is open” notice depends on a simple lock file, which can sometimes fail to clear if the project doesn’t close successfully, as in a crash. If you’re sure that the project isn’t open elsewhere, it can be ignored safely.
We’re not sure of the underlying cause, but Apple pushed a major iOS update, Dropbox completely changed their file interface tools, and iOS Scrivener itself released a new version to accommodate the first two, all within a very short time frame. It’s not a complete shock for there to be an error in the conversation between Scrivener and Dropbox somewhere in that process, but I would expect it to be a transient problem that goes away once you re-establish the link. Of course, keeping extra backups of your work is never bad.
The update seems to be the issue. My iPhone has the update it crashes with dropbox sync. My iPad has not been updated yet and it syncs and works just fine.
The unlink trick is not an answer. with 6 projects on Scrivener, I just can’t use my iPad to work because I know I will lose 15’ for each sync with the Mac. This bug has to be fixed very quickly, I just can’t work and I’m not the only one in this case
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve done the link and unlink trick several times now. Scrivener will work for a while, a few hours maybe, and then it goes back to the same unnamed error: black screen then home screen.
I did that. Jeff told me the problem may come from Dropbox. This is not a one time fix for me and my Scrivener iPad project page is a mess. I sync manually and it’s a pain in the *ss.
Thanks JimRac, that has worked. Not sure I want to try and use it on my iPad until I get home though so I’m working off my laptop. So grateful I brough it with me. My prime reason for extending my stay at the resort I’m at was to get on top of my book, I’m a little behind… for some strange reason I seem to be quite productive on planes and in hotels or at least away from home. No idea why…
Of course there is a pesky Best friends wedding I have to go to on the weekend… she thinks my main reason for being here is her wedding… shhhh don’t tell.
In all seriousness there might be something in the wifi connection for this issue. I didn’t have any problems with sync before. The wifi connection sucked here in the hotel and dropped halfway through trying to sync. The hotel told me that their normal system does not like mac’s so she gave me a different log in entirely. That one seems to be working just fine. Or did once I did that unlinking of the Dropbox and relinking trick.
I just unlinked, relinked, choosing to keep files on iPad. Now I have duplicate projects, the current ones being on the iPad. How do I tell Scrivener to trash the Dropbox-linked projects and link the ones on iPad?
I’m really, really nervous about this. The longer I have two different projects with the same name, the sooner I’m going to do a disastrous over-write.
I just tried the unlinking and relinking approach, and the result was the deletion of at least one of the sections of my book. Zero words. Luckily, I’ve taken to copying everything I write into separate Google docs for safekeeping, having lost a different section in the last 3 weeks in syncing between iOS and Mac.
At this point it has cost me hours of work in recreating things I’d already written. I have no faith in using the iOS version anymore, which makes me sad.
I lost an entire section as well and don’t have a backup. This was the bulk of an entire chapter and represents many hours of work. I need to get this back somehow!
As a general note: we’ve got a 1.1.5 fix in the review phase right now that should fix sync crashing that started with the most recent update. Keep on the lookout for that and install it when you get the chance, then let us know if that didn’t resolve it.
