Sunday, January 6, 2013

Triage! Recovering Scrivener Files From Dropbox or Google Drive Errors

There is nothing worse than writing tens, hundreds, or thousands of words and then losing all of that work.

A while back I did a comparison of Google Drive and Dropbox, and briefly discussed the issues you can run into with Scrivener, the writer's fancy-pants friend. I didn't really focus on Scrivener because I was comparing cloud storage solutions (and I really should take a look at SkyDrive sometime I suppose, now that I'm running Windows 8).

Anyway, reader Chaim recently got in touch with me to ask for help. He was using Scrivener with Google Drive, and somehow his work across two computers got out of sync. The result? Lost work.

I've had the same thing happen to me more than once working with Scrivener on Dropbox. It's a problem that afflicts anyone using Scrivener with either cloud product. And it sucks. Simply put, you must make sure that you've closed out of Scrivener and let your project sync to the cloud before you open it on any other computer. Period. If you don't, your project file will get screwed up and you will appear to lose work.

I say appear because, hey! All is not lost. And I'm here to walk you through getting your files back.

Step 1: First, copy your Scrivener project out of your cloud storage and onto another location on your local computer. This is like isolating a crime scene, or quarantining a patient: you don't want Dropbox or Google Drive to do any more futzing with your files while you're trying to recover your writing. Scrivener stores projects in a folder with the .scriv extension (on Macs this will look like a file, but trust me, it's a folder). This is what you need to copy somewhere - your Desktop will work just fine.

Step 2: Next you need to open the .scriv folder and take a look at its ooey-gooey contents. On Windows this just means opening the folder. On a Mac, you'll need to change the folder name and get rid of the .scriv extension, so the operating system will know to treat it as a folder instead of a file.

Either way, once you're inside the folder you want to look for the Files folder. Open that, then open the Docs folder inside it. You'll be greet with a big old list of numbered RTF files. (RTF is like a Word document's handicapped cousin.) These are where Scrivener stores all of your writing... and odds are that writing you "lost" is still there, even if Scrivener can't see it.*

Open up the RTFs, one by one, and look for your lost writing. If one of the RTFs is labeled "conflicted" or otherwise numbered oddly, that's probably the one with the missing text. Once you've found it, open up your original Scrivener project (the one that's still in your cloud storage folder) and paste the missing text in. Voila, done! This is what worked for Chaim, and hopefully it worked for you too. If not, move on to Step 3.

Step 3: Is your text not in the RTFs? Then it's time to check your patient history... I mean backups. One handy feature of Scrivener is that it automatically backs up the last five copies of your project file for you, by default. The problem is that it can be hard to find out where Scrivener is storing the backups if you just go looking for them. Fortunately, Scrivener has made this easy for you.

Open your project and select the "Tools" dropdown at the top menu, then "Options...". Click the "Backup" tab in the window that opens up. Along with some other options, you'll see your backup location and a button that says "Open backup folder...". Press the button and voila! Backups.

Now, with any luck you'll see a ZIP file named after your project. Copy the most recent one to a convenient location and unzip it. Then, open the unzipped project in Scrivener and look for your lost text. If all is well, you'll see it. If not, you'll want to go to Step 4.

Step 4: At this point your lost work isn't in your current project or your backups, and it's time to get serious. Get out your scalpel, fire up your web browser and browse to your cloud storage solution's website. We're going to check your version control system.

What's version control? Basically, when you save changes to a file to the cloud, Google Drive and Dropbox will both keep the previous version of the file for 30 days (by default; you can pay to extend this to life). If you make an error ("Whoops! I deleted 3,000 words and hit the Save button by accident!"), you can pull up the previous version and recover your work. The details vary between Google Drive and Dropbox, so look them up in their respective manuals.

What if you don't save that often? Well, Scrivener is your friend here too. It has an auto-save feature that fires off every two seconds, to keep your work up to date. If you're editing your project while you're hooked up to the cloud (i.e. you have an Internet connection), you're fine. If not, well... maybe go back to Step 2 and take another look?

Hopefully by this point you've got your work back (voila!), so let's consider leading a healthy lifestyle for a moment, and move back to...

Step 5: Backups. As nice as Scrivener's default backup configuration is, you can and should be able to do better, especially if you're using cloud storage already.

Open up the Backup window again and take a look at the options. First, make sure "Turn on automatic backup" is checked! Then, tell Scrivener when to back up your work. I use "Backup on project close", but if you're paranoid you can select "Backup with each manual save". I also like to compress my backups into ZIP files and add the date to backup file names, just in case I need an easy time stamp reference to some colossal revision effort.

Finally, there's the big two options I recommend. First, for the "Retain backup files:" option, I recommend keeping ALL of your backups in perpetuity. For modern computers the space cost isn't going to be a big deal, and you might be grateful for the option to look back at your work months later (say, if you want to harvest a discarded character for some new project).

Second, create a folder in your Dropbox or Google Drive for your Scrivener backups, and change your "Backup location:" option to point to that folder. You should only have to do this once, although if you work on both Mac and Windows computers, you will have to do it twice. I'd also recommend using a separate backup folder for Windows and Mac under those circumstances. I don't know that the different operating systems will clobber each other, but I also don't like to take chances.

Once more, voila! You now have a Scrivener configuration that will silently back up all of your work to a separate folder, time stamp every backup, and upload them to the cloud one by one. Your work should have a long and healthy life - but maybe hook an automated backup drive to one of your computers, too. Just in case.

Hopefully you've found this useful. If you've got any other tips on how to keep your writing safe, post a comment and share!

*The dirty details: Scrivener uses a .scrivx project file to tell it which RTFs contain what text. If your .scrivx folder gets screwed up during a cloud storage sync, Scrivener won't be able to "see" the file, even though the actual RTF is probably still there. As far as I can tell this is the most common file syncing error that Scrivener runs into.

80 comments:

Carolyn Lieberg said...

Holy Back-up Devices, David!

First -- thank you for posting this extensive explanation.
Second -- I feel as if it would just be simpler to re-type my novel AGAIN, now that I have new AIR. Plus iCloud. Plus a Time Machine. Plus Dropbox, which has not worked. It's all so locked up that it's the kind of thing that can send a person back to paper and a typewriter.

Your patience is a fine example. I'm going to dig up a flash drive.

Many thanks,
Carolyn

David said...

Carolyn,

Thanks! I'm glad I could be helpful. Best of luck with your backups.

Denise said...

Hi David I did exactly that with syncing Scrivener files in Dropbox and thought I'd lost about 30,000 words of a novel. I used your helpful triage and under Step 2 got all the RTF's back and copy /pasted them to safe locations. All is now not lost thanks to you. Scrivener developer's advice was not as helpful as yours. I've now gone overboard with backup and saving with external hard drive etc etc. Maybe we all need a big scare to be more careful! Thanks so much anyway.
Denise

David said...

Thanks Denise! Glad I could help.

eliza said...

You are a god amongst men! Thank you so much for posting this! I didn't lose nearly as much as Denise, but it was enough to make me not want to write again today, which would have been very sad indeed. I'm bookmarking this, because--knowing me--I'll have this same issue in the future.

Thanks again!

Gwen said...

Thanks so much for this explanation and for taking the time to put it up to help others! Just recovered a lost 800 words of my thesis by looking for the Scrivener RTF files. Phew! This is brilliant - I'll bookmark it in case of future disasters :)

Thanks,
Gwen

David said...

Gwen, Eliza,

Thank you both! Glad you found the post helpful.

bertcarson said...

David,
I was on the verge of rewriting 5,000 words but decided to search "recover Scrivener files" first.
Obviously I found your life-saving post and it worked. So, instead of rewriting my missing chapters I'm posting a "thank you more than you can imagine" comment.
I owe you and I'm glad I do.
Bert

David said...

Bert,
That is great to hear! I'm glad I could help you, especially with that many words!

Anonymous said...

I was using Dropbox (there is not enough free space for me), Sugarsync (same like Dropbox, and for me slow).

Now I am using new service - Copy. They will give you 15GB for free.

If you register on Copy by this link, and install their application to backup / sync your data, you will get 20GB for free!
Here is the link: https://copy.com?r=zPku0e

Bonus for you is, that if you will find some referral, you will get next 5GB for free per each! Like this, you can get unlimited space for free!

l-mag said...

You kinda saved my life. I can't thank you enough!!

michelle m. said...

David, Thank God for you! I found this blog entry thru a Google search after I inadvertently cut a scrivener scene. I wasn't aware of the scrivener backup files until now. I first tried to recover from Dropbox, but saw that I had to convert to zip. I wasn't aware of that either. For me, searching thru Scrivener's back up was less intimidating. I hadn't even known of it's existence, but thanks to you, I do now. So relieved. Thanks again!

Rina said...

Hi David,

Can you help me? I will collapse if I lose my 200,000 words! Right now I'm just feeling sick to my stomach (I know, I know -- I should have kept another copy on a computer or USB, but I had no idea that Google Drive would endanger my work like this!)

I'm on Mac OSX 10.7.5, and I am stymied on step #2: the files have .scrivx extensions (not .scriv) that I'm unable to open:

1. when I accept the prompt to change the extension to .scriv , I get another prompt saying "The project package 'documents-export-2013-09-30 2' has no file extension. Scrivener for OS X requires that the project package has the .scriv file extension. / In order to open this project, Scrivener will add this file extension to the project now. (This will not affect your ability to open the project on other platforms, where the .scriv package will still appear as a regular folder.) Continue?"; when I click OK then I get a prompt that says the document could not be opened bc "The file system would not allow Scrivener to add the .scriv file extension to the project package, so the project cannot be opened. Please check your permissions."

2. when I tried to change the name myself to .scriv , then I got a prompt that the document could not be opened bc "The project at "xyz.scriv" seems to be of an older format, but no binder.scrivproj file could be found inside it. It may be missing or corrupt, possibly because of a problem with the device on which it is stored, or because of a synchronisation problem. / Try ctrl-clicking on the project in the Finder and selecting "Show Package Contents", then look for a file entitled 'binder.scrivproj'. Ensure it has not been renamed by a backup routine. If it does not exist, try restoring from a backup."

3. when I attempted the change the name of w/o any extension at all -> then I get a prompt "The file system would not allow Scrivener to add the .scriv file extension to the project package, so the project cannot be opened. Please check your permissions.")

I would be grateful for any help: litterature & latte (scrivener customer support) takes forever to get back and from what I've read on your posts they're not that great. If it's easier for me to contact you outside this blog please let me know.

Thanks in advance,
Rina ☹

David said...

Rina,

Try opening a Terminal window and using that to look at your Scrivener project. You definitely don't want to open it up in Scrivener for step 2. The format should be a .scriv folder with a .scrivx file inside of it - you shouldn't be messing with the .scrivx file at all.

What version of Scrivener are you using? If it's an older version, that could also be an issue.

Anonymous said...

Hi David,

I really lucked out - I actually managed to find a not-too-old version of my work somewhere! Whew!

When I have time, I'm going to have to think very carefully about which cloud facility I can use for Srivener without a scare like this...

Thanks so much for getting back to me.

Rina

Unknown said...

Thank you, this saved me a lot of work!

Cyan said...

All this makes so much sense, David Thank you very much. I do have a somewhat strange problem, and I'm hoping I'm not quite up the creek...but bear with me (and if you're tired of tech trouble-shooting and rather not, I completely get it!)

So. Me, cafe, friend gesticulating...water on computer. MacBook Pro dead. (Tried drying, got corrosion anyway, etc.) Computer taken to shop, hard-drive fine, and right now we're seeing if we can revive it. It died in the middle of me working on 3 different Scrivener projects (including my dissertation. Ouch.)

Since bought a new computer and used Apple's One-to-one to file transfer everything over. Also had Scrivener linked to Dropbox, to which it would reliably update.

You can see where this is going, maybe. After computer #1 died, I checked Dropbox, and content looked fine. After getting Scrivener back up and going on computer #2, I open up my 3 projects again, and....shit. They're not at all current. In fact, I can't get anything newer than Nov 18, 2013 off Dropbox or Scrivener, despite working tons on all three projects since then. I'm really trying to grasp all prickly straws possible to save my work -- do you know what could be happening/why? Maybe, because computer #1 didn't ever shut Scrivener properly, it didn't save those projects and I lost everything up until the last time Scrivener closed on Nov 18th? (Doesn't seem likely, though -- I do leave projects open, but I don't think I left 'em open THAT long; I'm pretty sure I've done a restart on Comp #1 after then before it died.) And even if so, shouldn't I have versions saved on Dropbox? I can't find a darn thing.

My last-ditch effort it to try the backup zip files that might still be on my old hard-drive. Failing that, can you think of anything else? I've tried everything you mentioned in your explanation, and it's just not there.

Any help is very appreciated.
-Cyan, a baffled fellow writer

David said...

Cyan,

That does sound like a head-scratcher. Scrivener should be saving automatically every time you pause for two seconds, so unless you were manually copying your projects over to Dropbox you shouldn't have lost weeks of work.

Have you tried right-clicking on individual files in Dropbox (the web interface) and checking the previous versions? If your laptop clobbered the current versions they might still be online. If that doesn't work the ZIP files may be your best bet.

Anonymous said...

Thanks. You helped me recover a whole morning's work!

Anonymous said...

Thanks David, for this comprehensive instructional on how to find 'lost' files and also create a more comprehensive back-up habit as a writer.

Do you know how long it takes for Scrivener to back up a project? I have had files not showing up when I exit Scrivener then reopen soon after. Luckily, I have found them again with your help, but if I knew when it was safe to reopen Scriv, that would be helpful. Marsha

David said...

Hi there,

Scrivener should pop up a progress bar while its backing up your manuscript. If you don't see the bar, either Scrivener is backing up very quickly or you don't have backup enabled.

Either way, it is a backup, and shouldn't cause you to lose anything from your current file one way or the other. Are you also backing up with a cloud solution?

Marsha said...

Yes, I do backup on Dropbox, and that's what I used, plus your great instructions, to locate my files.
Recently I put some photographs in my project, closed it, then soon afterwards reopened it. The photos were no longer there. They were still available in the backup. But files going missing is a worry--even if they're somewhere else it's time-consuming to retrieve them. Marsha

David said...

Marsha,
Afraid I don't have any suggestions to you, other than to check out the Scrivener forums and see if anyone else has had this issue. For what it's worth, I find that inserting images into your Scrivener project greatly increases the time required to back up the project, and I've stopped doing it where I can. If I need reference images I'll store them in a separate folder.

Anonymous said...

Thank you!! You just saved me hours of work...

Anonymous said...

Thanks David, that's a good suggestion re putting image files elsewhere.

Marsha said...

Thanks David for the extra suggestion re visuals.
Marsha

Anonymous said...

Fantastic tutorial.

Sadly the project i was trying to recover has not created a backup. This is also true of 2 other projects. Do you happen to know why this might be? Seems like the work is lost.

E.S. Ivy said...

Thanks! I was having trouble finding where Scrivener saved my work. I've set my backup to Dropbox the way you recommended. Now off to search your blog and see if you have another recommendation on where Scrivener is doing that automatic backup every 2 minutes... :)

Katherine said...

Katherine from Scrivener support here. I found this page because one of our users followed your procedure before contacting us.

Just a quick comment on the original procedure. The problem with copying the recovered files back into the Dropbox version of the project is that the original files -- the conflicted copies that Scrivener can't see -- are still in Dropbox, too. When users are working across multiple computers, it's possible for each local computer to have *different* conflicted files, causing much chaos. An invisible "conflicted" file on Computer A might be the live file on Computer B.

So my usual advice is to drag the conflicted files out of the project, then re-import them back into the *local* copy (isolated from Dropbox). Then, once everything's back to normal, overwrite the (damaged) Dropbox project with the (repaired) local project.

David said...

Katherine,

Thanks for stopping by! Good point - when I've run into conflicts it's always been between two machines, so I'm not familiar with how Dropbox or Google Drive would handle three or more conflicting file versions. Definitely something I'll be testing soon.

Unknown said...

Hi David, might be too late but can you clarify that in step I need to change the file name, remove the .scriv but what to? I tried removing it altogether but it didnt change anything and stayed as a .scriv file, which means I cant access it as a folder.
And Im really not sure anyway if Im doing the right thing. The scriv files and folders I saved from my pc to Google Drive and now cant open on mac. I think what you are explaining should work te same for me but..Aaargh
Kavi

David said...

Hi kavi,

The point of getting rid of the .scriv extension is so a Mac will treat it like a folder instead of a file. It's actually easier to open a Terminal on Mac, then use the command line to change the extension, or just browse into the .scriv folder and copy its contents out. Hope this helps!

cheryllezak@wordpress.com said...

Thank you so much! I lost thankfully, only part of my story, but my heart sank at the mistake and I was desperate to recover the text. I located Scrivener's backup and looked through the .rtf files a found my text! If you were here I would kiss you! : P

-Cheryl

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much. I just had this exact issue and lost a whole day of revisions. (I know some people who were stressing over losing an entire novel are rolling their collective eyeballs, but hey. I was still pretty worked up.) I'm fairly computer literate, but I didn't even know Scrivener was making multiple back ups. I followed the steps and recovered my information. All is right in my little world. Thanks so much, you just went all out EMT on my morning workflow.

Anonymous said...

I use SugarSync and a few times I have lost data so I started backing up on an external as well. But i didn't run into a really huge problem until tonight. 5,000 words lost! And of course I didn't back up to my external last night. 4 days of work and I needed it for Sunday. I found all my work by step 2 and I was able to recover it all!!
Thank you so much for posting this. I was literally in tears!

S.Yates said...

You just saved my sanity! Thank you ever so much for posting this solution! SY

Anonymous said...

You can also use CrashPlan to backup your files. I find it the most reliable and it's cheap. I've had many issues with TimeMachine stopping to work for no apparent reason.

shrinithi said...

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Catie said...

you just saved my life. thank you.

Unknown said...

Brilliant! Thanks!! My problem was Scrivener crashing and not allowing me to open my file. HUGE help so thanks!

Angela said...

Holy shit!!
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!!
Mercury Retrograded all over my client work, and I thought all was lost. (Including my rationality, because: dafuq? I'm going astrological on this bitch.)
In the middle of my hot-sweat-conniption-fit, I found this article, took many deep breaths, and cavewomaned my way through.

It worked!!

Now, I feel like a genius. And am virtually kissing your feet.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I'd bake you cupcakes if I had your address ... except, that'd be weird ... so, please accept my sweaty-palmed gratitude, instead.

Josee said...

Thank you soooo much! You just saved my life... or a few hours of it surely.

David said...

I'm glad people are still getting use out of this. Tickles me pink. :) Glad to help.

Eric Vasbinder said...

I am seeing a lot of people with this issue, so decided to comment here. If all you need is backup, DO NOT USE FREE CLOUD STORAGE like Google Drive, OneDrive, Box, or Dropbox.

In a situation like this, please keep in mind that cloud companies like Dropbox and Box.com, and services like Microsoft’s OneDrive and Google’s Google Drive all mention that their services are not appropriate for backup. Their intended use is non-real time synchronization, not off-site backup. For off-site backup, which is critical to anyone’s important information, please use something intended for backups. For example, CrashPlan or BackBlaze.

If all you need is off-site backup, then using cloud storage is neither necessary nor ideal.

Yes, cloud storage is usually free for consumers, and backup services cost money, but $10 a month for a much more reliable backup system is a small price to pay. Especially when you get multiple versions of backups over years of time.

David said...

I'd agree. I work across multiple computers, so keeping my writing in Dropbox or Drive is ideal for me, but that won't help if a file gets corrupted and propagates to the cloud. For backups I use separate drives I hook up to my computer as needed. I tried Crashplan, but backing up everything I wanted backed up blew through my Comcast data cap in a week.

Eric Vasbinder said...

Interesting. I'm surprised your cap is so low. I've used Comcast for years and sent about ~2TB of data in one month. No issues. If you don't mind me asking, which state are you located in?

David said...

Maryland. I think the cap was for uploads only, and Comcast stated the cap I hit would be going away soon anyway so I wasn't charged more. (Something like that, it's been a few years.)

Eric Vasbinder said...

Yeah. We're in MD too. No problems with uploading a ton to CrashPlan via Comcast now.

cette nana said...

Hi David,

I just lost a large section of work I was working on in Scrivener. Prior to saving, my software was lagging and I waited for a moment for the the text to appear. Then I decided to save and exit, so I could reopen it and hopefully solve the lagging problem, but when I reopened a large section had disappeared!

I tried your advice (I have a Mac) and I do have my Scriv. set to backup upon closing and save every 2 seconds- so my older text should be somewhere but I cannot find it in my backup folders. Do you have any suggestions about something I should try/do differently?

David said...

cette nana: Ooh, that's a tough one. The lag you mentioned has me worried - if the laggy text was what you lost, I'm not sure if it got saved in the first place, even with autosave on. If it didn't get saved, ever, the backup won't be helpful.

My recommendation would be to crack open the .scriv file, dig through the RTFs and see if you can find the missing text. I'd also verify that you're able to open the Scrivener file, close it, and that a new backup file is generated when you close the file. If backups aren't being generated and your Scrivener settings are correct, there might be a larger problem with your system.

Good luck!

Isobel said...

David,

Thank you SO much! Your article just saved my whole novel plot document, plus several sections of writing.

Somehow, using Dropbox, I had copied old, virtually empty copies of my file over the newest ones, by logging into a laptop I'd not used in a while.

Thanks to your beautifully clearly-written post here, things are back in business again.

Really can't thank you enough!

Posted a link to this page on my Twitter feed @WordSherbert to say thanks and to help other people find this and will share it on my author's blog once I get that going.

All best wishes with your own work. Keep going!! :)

Isobel :)

Abigail said...

This was such a help - found a load of chapters I thought were lost forever! I'm unable, though, to import the text back into my project - maybe because I'd compiled my project? Any ideas? Is it possible to just revert to a previous version from the back up files? Am on the verge of giving up on Scrivener, even though I've really enjoyed it. It's stretching my limited technical capabilities!

Thank you so much for your post though. I was devastated to think I'd got to rewrite from scratch - at least now I know where the text is, even if I can't slot it all back together again!
Abigail

Hyper Sonic said...

An interesting fact:

I wanted to copy the content of the RTF in Files/Docs directly to Scrivener, but when adding a new file the content of my lost files (existing but invisible because unlinked to the project) appeared automatically! I guess this comes from the fact that files are numbered in order (86.rtf, 87.rtf, etc.) so if the project has a wrong indexation it still thinks that the last number is 86, so it creates a new file with 87 but does not overwrite the existing file, so you can see it directly in Scrivener!

Since comments are in the .links file of the same name, the comments were also automatically reloaded. So if you want to retrieve files you added last and that were unlinked by Scrivener (and not replaced by others in a parallel version you worked on on another computer), you can just create new files until you retrieve them all.

Otherwise, I guess you would have to rename the conflicted files to the consecutive numbers after your max RTF number, and then create new files. But make a copy of them before, in case they are overwritten by Scrivener.

Charles V. said...

Wow. This just saved me lots of heartache. Thank you for explaining this. This matters.

Rocio Mendoza said...

WOW. This saved my life. THANK YOU!

Unknown said...

David, I have a question, because you seem to be the only person who's got a good answer to this issue. Okay, first, I don't back up to a cloud (trust me, I'll be figuring something out) and my project is set to save after two seconds of inactivity and backing up after closing the program. Admittedly, I don't close Scrivener as much as I should have in the last three years, but this has never been an issue for me before. I opened up my computer this morning, and had an message about the file path to my project being changed. Being the idiot that I am, and not immediately assuming the worst, I closed out of the pop up. When I closed out, it said the project could not be found. Now, I know how to find the backups, as I've had to do this once before. But that backup was ten days old, and didn't include the 7,000 words that I'd done in the mean time.

I show a backup happening this morning to OneDrive (which I didn't have set up, but the folder is empty, other than showing correct opening sentences on each text within a folder), and every other of the five backups from today (probably from me searching) keep showing the same backup from ten days ago. I've searched through all the rtf files on each of the backups from after the message popped up and nada. Lit and Latte customer service hasn't gotten back to me yet, and I'm just sick to my stomach after losing the words. Pleeeeeeeeeeeease tell me you have some other magic solution!

Sheila said...

Great post and helped me find my 'missing' backup files containing 10 days work.
Thanks you.

Gene Cornett said...

Fantastic, this article just saved me a ton of grief

Mia Farrar said...

Thank you so much!! I thought I had lost several days worth of work. Vanished into the great void.... Yet, there it was, hidden away! Such a relief!

Anonymous said...

Thank you :) A scene got deleted due to a backing up error. The info on this page helped me to recover it. A very big thank you!!! I have it back now!! saved me hours of work. Will bookmark this page.

Benjamin said...

THANKS A LOT!

Unknown said...

Good post, with lot's of good information, especially #3. Small point: RTF is DOC's "handicapped" cousin? I prefer to think of RTF as DOC's svelte, athletic, multilingual open source cousin, while Word is more, well Pickwickian. Thanks for the article, though.

Julia said...

Thanks for writing this! You rock.

Anonymous said...

Thank you! Exactly what I needed today. You made my day.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
M. Huw Evans said...

Thank you for this!
You saved me many hours of work.

Unknown said...

Great post! I prefer to use Backup& Restore Dropbox plugin on WordPress for all my files. I just need to link it to my Dropbox account and it automatically backs everything up. https://wordpress.org/plugins/dropbox-backup/

DustBSH said...

Yes, you saved me a lot of work. Don't know what happened. I had my work in ProWriting Aid for correction, but when I opened the file it was gone. Just gone. Heart beating, sweat, panic mode and such things.
But through the Backup idea, I found it again.
Stil have no idea what caused this. Thanks a million.
Koos

Unknown said...

Hi,
Do you happen to know where and how I can find lost files after syncing with Dropbox, using iOS 10 on a iPad ?
After syncing, everything is just empty, both the Dropbox .scriv file as well as the local project file. Only the title shows up!
Hope you van save me from a depression...
Kind regards,
Frans Verhaaren

David said...

Hi Frans,
Have you checked the online Dropbox site? It has a 30 day file history that might have your original work in it. If Scrivener for iOS just didn't save your work you might be out of luck, but if it clobbered something you'd written on a different system you should be able to recover it.
Otherwise, contact the Scrivener folks, stat! It's a new app and I'm sure they're eager to resolve any problems.
Good luck!

Unknown said...

Hi david,
Thanks for responding so quickly!
I've found, probably all, the work on the dropbox site, as you suggested.
Still I've to find the solution to get it back in the scrivener project folder. I've been trying a lot, but failed so far.
Guess I'll have to ask them.
Cheers,
Frans

nicole.marie said...

Thank you thank you thank you!!!! I don't know you but I'm forever in your debt.

Admin said...

thanks but before you must back up your data using a-Hard-Drive so that it wont be lose.

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Anonymous said...

THANK YOU!!!

Alan Robertson said...

One more rescue: I lost my morning's 3 hours of work on my dystopian novel. Dropbox! Found your article and #3 was what I needed, although the "tools" option was there, I simply used preferences>backup>open backup folder, and there it was. I am so grateful!

Anonymous said...

You have saved the day with this post. My heart stopped as I thought I had lost a months work.
Your post has clear, concise directions with options.
Fantastic.
Thank you.
Janelle PhD candidate

Anonymous said...

thank you thank you so much David, I'm not very tech smart so I found the instructions difficult to follow, but finally, after hours of trying, managed to reinstate an earlier version of my project with the missing chapter. Beyond grateful. just not sure how much i want to keep using scrivener if it's this hard!
Manda

Anonymous said...

Thank you so much man, you saved me from a mental breakdown haha!!

Unknown said...

Oh. My. GOD. You are AMAZING! You have single-handedly rescued my evening, not to mention a whole chapter that I thought had been lost to the evil demons of accidental deletions! Thank you SO MUCH for posting this!