I must have hit ms close for some reason, maybe aiming at the minimize button for another app. Suddenly it said it was backing up and it was gone. REALLY gone. Wasn’t in my project shortcuts folder, nor was the backup. The backup location specified in the preferences didn’t exist anymore. (Lots of different pathways to library and app support, but nothing for scrivener at all.) I usually store the main version of the ms on dropbox plus one version of the backup. Then the default backup on the hard drive as specified per Scrivener. I upgraded to 2.something not long ago and changed the specs as directed and thought it was working. Upgraded to 3.0 a few weeks ago and didn’t notice any further instructions in this regard.
Any other place I can look? Not in trash either. I’ve done searches of entire system, including dropbox.
Kind of in shock. Years of work, some on stick drive but a burst of new stuff not, some printed out, a lot not.
Have you used the web interface for Dropbox to view version history?
Thanks! I didn’t know you could do that. I see: the info and scriv file that I opened afterward as a test. That’s intact Some writing.history and other scattered data that is from about the right time this afternoon when the missing file closed, but apparently there is no program on my machine that can read those files. Similar fragmented info from the last time last week when I was working in this file. I don’t know enough to hazard a guess, but it looks like some kind of Sriv specific blaster came through and ate the stuff that makes a file cohere?
OK, when I looked under deleted files in dropbox, I found all the poetry files. There is no way I would have had time to delete them myself between when the file closed and when I started looking for it. So…??? I am afraid to reopen… will try backing up on stick and finding a way to back up on hard drive again.
Meanwhile, why are some files tagged scriv and others scrivx? Is that part of the problem? They have the same content, I believe. THOUGH, when this happened, I was looking for the hard copy of a poem that should have been present in the file and wasn’t. And had been in the past.
Thanks Derek for the start on figuring this out. Big step, actually.
Have you done a complete search of your home folder for your main project file? Click on the “home” folder in the Finder sidebar (should look like a little house icon next to your shortened user name), and then search for .scriv
Scrivener itself is incapable of deleting project (you have to do that with the Finder), so unless Dropbox did something hinky, it should still be there.
Also, do a full system search for a portion of your project’s name, and the backups should turn up somewhere.
Hi thanks, I had tried that, yes. And I’d also tried searching dropbox and trash with no results, but it turned up in trash after all. This has happened in the past…I don’t trust search in Mac though I know many love it.
I think dropbox did something with it, not Scriv.
Now I need to know where to put my backup file as something also happened to the pathway where the backup is supposed to go. I’ll start another thread for that. Thanks again.