I have teetered on the brink of Macdom for a long time and Scrivener has tipped me over the edge, I get a Mac laptop next week, but I’m a total Mac noob!
I currently have a NaNoWriMo Novel on Windows Beta but it will need months (maybe years) of work! So what is the best way to save it to be able to retrieve it on my new MacBook which of course will have Scrivener 2? It’s all text, should be about 60K by the weekend and I have pix and diagrams in a different folder since Beta doesn’t like them. (I have backups emailed to myself, a copy at work and a Word 2007 backup)
Your Scrivener project will open in the Mac version natively, so you don’t need to go through any odd hurdles. When you transfer everything over from your Windows machine, your .scriv project folder from Windows will look like a fancy package file on the Mac. With Scrivener installed, just open the .scriv file (no need to go inside to find the .scrivx) and it will launch Scrivener. (Likewise you can run Scrivener and then use “open” to find the project wherever you stored it on your Mac.) All will be well! And you can then of course import/drag and drop all your other file types that weren’t usable yet in the beta.
“An exception was thrown” while trying to open your file…
“The project data may have become corrupted. Try restoring from a backup, or create a new project and use File > Import > Scrivener Project to retrieve work from this project (structure information may be lost).”
Importing doesn’t work. Saving as new scriv doc doesn’t work. HELP! Original was created in Windows Beta, have just purchased 2.0 for Mac, but can’t get doc to open on the Mac at all.
I have tried accessing the Scriv file through Dropbox & by manually moving it from my PC to my Mac w/a portable hard drive… in each case, the file appears as on the PC s a folder that must be opened to get to the “Project” file inside, and opens beautifully, but appears as a single Scriv icon that will NOT open on the Mac.
A file that saved from the Beta 1 version opens perfectly, it’s the more recent Beta 3 files that won’t open.
Meh, I don’t know if this is the issue or not, but you could give it a try…
Open the .scriv package, then go to Files/version.txt and open that. If it’s empty, type “16” (no quotes) and save it. Then make a duplicate of the .scrivx file and delete the original (leaving the duplicate in its place). Then try to open your .scriv file.
For some reason, some of the Windows beta projects seem to get corrupted–although they won’t open in the Windows beta, either, when that happens, so I’m not really sure it’s what’s happening to you, and since I have no idea what’s causing it to happen I don’t know if your projects would’ve been vulnerable to that. (It would be different for different copies of the project, so it’s not necessarily the case that this isn’t true just because you can open a version on your Windows machine but can’t open the copy of that file on the Mac.) Anyway, it can’t hurt.
As far as the .scriv appearing as a folder on the Windows and a single file on the Mac, that’s just the way the systems recognize it. It’s really just a folder with a special extension which Macs can read and “package” it all together neatly for you so you don’t have to worry your pretty little head about what’s bundled inside. At least, that’s my interpretation of the OS’s attitude. The point is, that’s what you’d expect to see going from Windows to Mac.
It already said 16 in the file. Copying the scrivx didn’t work. Sigh.
I know about the difference between how the files appear in Mac vs. Windows, I just think it’s interested that the Beta 1.0 version STILL shows up as folders EVEN on the Mac, and those files open perfectly. The ones that convert to a nice single icon on Mac are the ones that WON’T open!
Any other suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Does the master container folder have “.scriv” in the title? That’s the only thing that should determine whether or not it appears as a package on the Mac.
