Hello and Happy New Year!
I’m a book author (predominately nonfiction) with four titles published and a fifth in the works.
I’ve used Scrivener for nearly a decade now, first on a Windows laptop and then mainly in the Applesphere on a couple MacBooks, an iPad and iPhone. A few weeks ago, I purchased a 2024 Acer Chromebook as a backup and travel machine. It allowed me to allocate part of the decent-sized drive (128 MB) for Linux and to install the Debian distribution. Then, I purchased Crossover, successfully installed Windows Scrivener and purchased a license.
Although I can’t directly synch Scrivener on the Chromebook with my MacBook via Dropbox, I’m using the workaround of running the DropSynch app on my Chromebook to download and upload files back and forth. (I synch the Chromebook Scrivener projects to an external folder on that machine.)
Here’s the rub: As a nonfiction author, I use a lot of newspaper clippings, obtained through newspapers,.com and saved as PDFs, for research. I add them to the research section on Scrivener on my MacBook, but when I pull the project over to the Chromebook, they are essentially dead files.
I’ve sent a support request to L&L, but their staff is taking time off for the holidays until January 6. So I’m posting the issue here in hopes that someone might offer a possible solution. I’ve grabbed a couple screenshots from the Chromebook and if possible, I’ll post them here with the message. Many thanks!
Dennis Gaub
P.S. It appears that I can’t directly attach screenshot files here.
The Sync with External Folder mechanism is intended for sharing projects with third-party applications. Using it for transferring projects between instances of Scrivener is unsupported, unlikely to work, and entirely at your own risk.
A more robust solution would be to use the File → Backup → Backup To command to create a ZIP backup, then transfer the ZIP file by any convenient method.
Thanks. I’ll try that.
That worked. Thanks. Now, do you know how to clear a cache in Windows Scrivener? Hope I’m using the right terminology. Every time I start the program on my Chromebook, it brings up an outdated version of my project. I then have to click on the recent programs dropdown to get the right version. Annoying.
Try File > Favourite Projects, instead of File > Recent Projects, which tends to lead to the behaviour you’re experiencing. If the project is not in Favourite, add it, because unlike Recent, it’s not automatically added on opening.
By default, Scrivener will open whatever version was in use when it was last closed. If you update the project “behind Scrivener’s back,” by creating a new version on a different system, it’s up to you to make sure that the new project becomes the “current” one. One way to do that is by opening directly from Windows Explorer.