I just noticed that Scrivener seems to have duplicated all my files & folders in my project. I’m not sure when this happened since the “new” files/folders were appended at the bottom of the Binder. I’m outlining and started realizing that info I’d put in a folder seemed to be gone. I think I was sometimes working in the original folder, sometimes in the “new” duplicate/twin folder.
The content is all mixed up, synced? For example, I may click on a file that appears empty, only for the text of its twin file to show up. Since I don’t know when this happened, I don’t think I can go back to a backup from before and correct from there, I have no idea what would be the better file, the original, or a file with a more recent time stamp. And if the files have synced, I’m thinking some info is just gone.
I had been adding info throughout all these outline folders, trying to simplify a (too) complicated project. I was already confused by my timeline. Now I’m beyond frustrated and miserable and angry; I want to become a bus driver and never think of writing or scrivener again.
So, I can’t compare original and duplicate folder, culling all new info where added; it seems new info is gone, that original folder and duplicate have synced somehow.
What do I do?
Taking project off of the drive and working from a computer seems to be answer number one, so that this doesn’t happen again (that is, if i’m not just driving that bus). But what kind of salvage work can I do? (I’ve done a search on this topic and didn’t see anything beyond working from backup).
When looking at the dates of backup files it shows 192 files that having been created/worked on (saved) in the last week or so (which seems reasonable under normal circumstances). If the whole project had been duplicated, wouldn’t I see a huge pile of files in this category (created/worked on/saved)?
I’ll attempt to get you going in the correct direction until someone more knowledgeable comes along. As a disclaimer: My projects are on OneDrive, not that complicated (just text mostly-not a lot of research stuff), and my advice is based only on my experience-please be careful with your work
In my experience if you’re using some kind of auto-sync storage, no matter how careful you are, you will get some degree of binder, search, and project duplicates like below and it’s not that big a deal waits for someone to correct me. The computer I’m on now is AUTUMN, my other computer is the WINTER
What DOES matter is if you go a little deeper into the Docs folder there you’ll see the RTF files done by numbers. Those files have your actual text in them and if there’s a file named 45 and a file named 45-WINTER it means you really do have two current versions of writing. (Thankful only happened to me about twice).
So…pay close attention to those RTFs. If you find two with the same number, I use the compare feature in word to figure out which is the most current. If you got deep into your project before you caught what was going on this whole process could be a mess I’m afraid. Good luck.
Thank you for the input stho. I’ve been poking around the files and, weirdly, don’t see any duplicates. The only “duplicates” are “namefile” and “namefile_notes”, and the latter literally is the document note.
So far, here’s what I’ve done:
Made copies from backup files; one of the project before corruption (named Jan31), one of the latest version (with corruption, named Feb9). This so if I made it worse, they’d only be extra copies. Attempted to drag and drop between projects, which generally worked ok.
Only ok, because here’s the weird bit: it’s like the corruption was contagious. I dragged (the newer) files from Feb9 project and dropped into Jan31 project. If I had an unpopulated version of a document (file created, not filled with text) in Jan31, and a populated (filled with text) version in Feb9; just by clicking on that empty file in Jan31 project, the empty file immediately filled with text from the Feb9 file!! It was like the text migrated via telepathy. This was with NO copy/paste/drag/drop action; all I did was click on the empty file and boom, text appeared.
I’m hoping I have a fairly accurate version of my project after this drap/drop attempt. Thankfully, was working on outline, not wordy documents with a zillion edits.
Stroppy, I don’t think you mention exactly how you’re using OneDrive and Dropbox. On the Mac version of Scrivener, I find Dropbox to be rock-solid, and have had no need to try any other cloud service so I’ve steered clear of them (and Google Drive I believe is known to corrupt Scrivener projects). But for future reference for others - for you, little help now I know - L&L has this advisory in respect of OneDrive.
Yes good point Hugh. In fact, I think I made a hasty judgment blaming it on the OneDrive. I just recently started working off of the OneDrive (as opposed to storing the project on the PC and opening it from there; I’m a terribly inconsistent backer upper). Since this duplication has never happened before, I assumed it was some sort of lagging issue with OneDrive (after thinking I had done something screwy, always a first assumption).
To update that L&L post, if you’re on Win10 OneDrive no longer uses “Smart Files”.
I’m personally very sad about that feature loss but MS eliminated it to avoid confusion and problems like that post describes.
I keep the OneDrive icon always visible in my notification area. That way I can see when it is updating. If it is, I don’t open my project. (It will update files while I’m working on the project and that shouldn’t cause an issue). This helps me keep duplications to a minimum.
