Why can’t I get several projects in the binder? Screaming frustration

[ElleBee]

Please help before I beg for a refund and flee screaming.

Quick background: once, I had Scriv1 on a laptop. Laptop died. I got an iPad. I have been using the iOS app for many years, now. Just got a new laptop, and let’s avoid syncing hell for now and just go to appearance/configuration.

What’s throwing me is that on my ipad the binder has all 11 projects I have on Scrivener, all there, all available at a touch.

It must be possible to have that on Scrivener 3 (Windows), right? I ask because every time I try to pull an existing project up, it opens in a new window, and when I close it, that window closes.

Do you get me? I can only have one project represented at a time, in its own window. The rest all hide in Dropbox until I open them individually, when they pop up in separate windows.

I want to see them all in the binder.

I have so many other frustrations, I cannot tell you. I’m about ready to give up and run screaming through the hills. So I’m probably doing something very basically wrong. I apologise for my dense-ness!

If it helps, I’ll tell you how I got here.
My projects are all synced on iPad and it happily syncs to Dropbox on the iPad. Neat and tidy, been doing that for years as an extra back up (I have other unrelated back ups). I did used to sync to a different machine so the habit stayed.

I have Dropbox on my laptop. The app, it swears, but all I can see are the files. Anyhoo. And there they are, Dropbox/apps/scrivener/my 11 projects in .scriv. Present and correct.

I installed Scrivener to c:/programmes (well, it did automaticallyj
I set the backup to “documents” on my laptop, even gave it a cosy little folder all its own (which is wrong, I guess, because it stored my test project in documents, yes, but just under the nice folder I made for it) And the project did not travel to Dropbox on its own, either. Nor did it accept that it needed to do anything when I selected “sync to mobile”
Yes, I’m on the full version.
I paid money to drive myself insane like this.
And I cannot find anywhere that says how to simply start with an iPad and move to Windows. Everyone else seems to be going in the other direction. Or starting from scratch.

My IT friend watched all this for a while, then noped out completely. So maybe I’m not completely alone in finding this all as opaque as…
Also, I’ve been doing this go-round for years. Installing, failing, uninstalling. Please help!

[RuthS]

Hi ElleBee, and welcome to the forum.

I think some confusion in terminology is at the root of your frustration, and I’ll do my best to clear that up.

In this screenshot from my iPad, you’ll see the main iOS interface. It includes the list of projects that are synced between my iPad and my computer.

This list is not a project’s binder, however. It’s just the app’s interface showing the projects I can access either from my Dropbox storage or on the device’s internal storage.

Scrivener’s terminology uses the term “binder” specifically for the list of folders and documents within one project. Here’s a screenshot of my “Guitar Practice.scriv” project’s binder on my iOS device.

When you open the iOS app, you’re limited to viewing only one project at a time on your device. That is, you cannot view two Scrivener projects in a split screen. You’re always looking only at one project’s data at a time in the user interface.

In contrast, Scrivener on your computer can have multiple projects open at the same time, like this:

You might find that thinking of the iOS app’s list of different projects on the main screen is more like using your computer’s File > Recent or File > Favorite Projects list like this:

I regularly add and remove projects from my computer’s favorites list to make finding them easier. That way, they don’t age off the Recents list due to inactivity or updates.

[GoalieDad]

I regularily with have 4-5 projects open at one time to work on. Depending on your project sizes, you could easily combine several small projects into one larger project and you can migrate files, templates, metadata including labels, custom metadata and keywords.
With windows if I click on the Scrivener icon, i can see the names of all the open projects. Your choice of work flow, but can have multiple projects at your fingertips in windows.

[ElleBee]

@RuthS thank you so much. That is so much clearer. Such a simple but enormous misunderstanding.
I’ve got so used to the iOS interface I just could not figure it out, but you’ve explained it beautifully clearly.
I’m a bit sad because I really love the project list being visible, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it. And two at once will be very helpful for referencing past work.
You are marvellous.

Now to figure out why it doesn’t back up to where I asked it, and why it’s no longer syncing properly, but with a clearer head.

[paulcoholic]

This may also be of use: I use Scrivener on a Mac, so I don’t know if this is possible on the Windows version, but you can have multiple projects open in one Scrivener window. On the Mac Scrivener menubar, it’s Window—> Merge all Windows.

Then all projects opened separately will appear in tabs in just one Scrivener window.

This isn’t quite the answer to your question, but I thought it might be a little helpful in referring to multiple projects without having to constantly switch between umpteen instances of Scrivener.

If this is done differently in Windows, someone else can clarify.

[RuthS]

Unfortunately, the Windows version does not offer the Merge Windows command. Scrivener on macOS gets that command from the operating system.

[paulcoholic]

Oops. It’s an imperfect world.

[ElleBee]

Thank you, that’s good to know.