It’s funny how my Scrivener questions tend to come in clusters. Anyway…
When using external sync, am I correct that documents in the References folder are processed identically to those in other binder folders, the only difference being that those in Drafts (and Draft subfolders) end up in the external “Drafts” folder, while all others, including those in References, end up in the external “Notes” folder? That has long been my understanding.
I ask because it occasionally seems otherwise, and I’m trying to figure out why. One reason, attributable to user error, would be that the binder version was edited subsequent to the last synced version, and so would look newer to the sync process, which would then overwrite the externally edited synced version. But I always try to be careful to avoid that. What I’m seeing, or what I think I’m seeing here, is different from that. And seems to be connected to docs in the References folder.
Also, I find that when syncing, I sometimes have to press Shift+F6 to actually initiate the sync process. Any reason why that would be?
One difference is that the Reference folder can contain files (images, PDFs, etc.) that Scrivener itself cannot edit.
RTF is Scrivener’s native format, and RTF documents will be converted to/from any of a number of formats. The Sync with External Folder options allow you to handle Draft and non-Draft documents differently. Files in other formats will not be converted and will remain in their native format.
Hi. Thanks for the reply. I should have mentioned……
I am dealing exclusively with RTF documents. My typical procedure is:
The Scrivener project generates sync RTF files in the specified sync folders.
I open one of those RTF files in Word and work on it there, where I continue to save it as an rtf (e.g., it never gets converted to docx, etc.)
I do not perform any sync operations on the Scriv project while working on a synced file.
When I’m done working externally, I close the document in Word, then I delete the Backup that Word makes (keeping the sync folder clean without anything extraneous.)
At that point, I run Scrivener’s sync function, and the edited doc gets read back into the Scrivener doc that originally spawned it.
This always works. (And I take all kinds of backup precautions in connection with all such operations.)
My post was prompted after seeing what appeared to be the following: with an edited rtf, I tried to sync it back in Scrivener, but it was not updating the doc in the binder, which remained unchanged, and that the CURRENT binder doc was resynced and over-writing the edited doc. That WOULD be the normal behavior, if the binder doc had been edited however minimally. But I’m aware of that and try to make sure it doesn’t happen, e.g., by saving the externally edited document one final time as the last thing I do before syncing, and confirming the local binder doc is older than the incoming version.
Yeah, that definitely shouldn’t happen. And it should be equally unlikely regardless of whether the document is in the Draft folder.
If you don’t already, I would advise making sure Scrivener is closed while you’re working on the external folder.
You might consider deleting Word’s backup only after a successful sync, just in case.
Are all the edits happening on the same device? Is a cloud service involved? The tendency of cloud services to whisk things away to their servers can lead to all sorts of weird behavior.