When you close a project, Scrivener automatically saves it. This is great except when working across two computers using e.g. Drop box, and the computer you are on doesn’t have the most recent copy of the project.
E.g. I do some work on the laptop offline. The next day I open up my desktop, open Scrivener. It opens my project, I realise I haven’t connected my laptop to update the Dropbox copy. I immediately close the project, but Scrivener does a save. Now the local out of date project is the most recent. Dropbox and Scrivener become confused.
This is why it’s good practice to always synchronize to Dropbox when you’re done using a particular system.
It’s also why I recommend keeping Scrivener’s automatic backups outside of Dropbox. The laptop’s automatic backups would allow you to restore the most recent changes if needed in this scenario.
A Scrivener project is a package of files. Each time a package is opened, the project’s integrity and indexing are ratified, so even if the user makes no textual changes, the act of opening the package causes underlying verifications that systems regard as changes.
Ha – the ‘Scrivener gets confused’ got my ancient experience with sync protocols excited, so I tried this out.
Box score up front: Scrivener properly protects itself, and does assure you keep your work, iwith no confusion.
How it functions properly:
I put my iPad in Airplane mode to assure internet disconnected, and added text in a page of an S3-beta dummy testing project.
Closed Scrivener on iPad, was properly warned no sync because no internet for Dropbox. Good.
Went to laptop, added text to the same page of same project. Also added a new page with a little text.
Closed Scrivener on laptop, which updated Dropbox without issue since it had internet, and also saved a backup.
Went back to iPad, left Airplane mode, internet now connected again
Opened Scrivener on iPad, was asked to sync as laptop changes were properly noted.
I thus synced on iPad, was well informed there were conflicts, to be found in a Conflicts folder
checked what I had: found original iPad text still in the first page; while the added new page was properly present now, with its own laptop text.
looked in the freshly added Conflicts folder, and found a copy of the first page with the laptop changes, ready for some copy-paste to merge in a best way I could choose, thus properly not attempted by itself.
So, all is good, and you are fully saved from mistakes like this.
Scrivener is not confused – it’s doing just what it should, saving everthing and informing you so you can piece together the best combination of your two intents.