I use Scrivener on my laptop, and I back up on Dropbox. I just lost a month’s worth of work (I have to re-enter it from hardcopy). Suddenly Scrivener would only open the version from a month ago. Not obvious I was doing anything weird–it just started telling me that I might have Scrivener open on another computer. I do print from another computer, but I never edit or open Scrivener on it–just Dropbox. I’ve never received any warning about my saving practices. I didn’t know until now that there were even issues between Scrivener and Dropbox. Not sure which of these distinguished programs to ditch, but one of them is going.
How can you print a Scrivener project without opening it?
How could Scrivener know what you were doing with your files on the Dropbox server from outside of Scrivener?
Did you by any chance do some cleaning of the Dropbox folder in Finder on the other computer?
Have you looked for Scrivener’s automatic backups? You can find them by going to Scrivener → Preferences → Backups, and clicking the button to open the backup folder in Finder.
Katherine
That’s the mystery! Believe me, losing a month’s work without any sign I’d done anything weird is highly disturbing. I did do some cleanup of the Dropbox folder, but on my home laptop–not the alien computer.
The backed up file is the one missing the month’s work. There may be some saved pieces in there, but a whole section is just … gone.
The Dropbox folders are synchronised between computers. That’s the whole point of Dropbox. If you clean the Dropbox folder on one computer it is cleaned on any other computer as soon they are started and sync their content.
Yes, of course. You asked whether I had cleaned up the Dropbox while using the alien computer. I hadn’t.
Four days later, I’ve lost a month’s work without having done anything obviously stupid or unusual, and I have little to no response from the Scrivener support team.
And your cleanup of Dropbox was done how?
Scrivener doesn’t move around things or delete projects so it must actually have been something you did. But without knowing what you have done or where you save your backups, we can’t help you.
About L&L’s support. Have you mailed their support? This is primarily a user forum. We try to help one another as best we can, but for that we need more detailed info. If you say that your recent projects were deleted, the only one that could possibly have done that is yourself.
Have you checked the ’Recently deleted file’ using the web interface to Dropbox? And have you checked the Trash on your computers?
I am aware that I may have “done something”, but nothing I did was obviously dodgy. I made a fuller post in a new topic in the main forum where I described what I did. Yes, I have emailed Support. I’ve heard nothing, four days. I realize that blaming the victim is the natural mode here, but consider that the program may have some quirks that have destructive outcomes even when no one does anything obviously stupid. Users should know this, and make their choices accordingly.
Ah, good one. Having just lost a ton of work and time, I think it’s still worth keeping up.
Where did you find that comment? To my knowledge I have never posted that.
Yeah I think it’s still worth stating that one ought to be cautious when using sync technology in general. On the other hand, it’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that work can be lost through using Dropbox. In my experience that doesn’t happen. Not being able to see the data Dropbox moved out of Scrivener’s view isn’t the same as losing it, unless one makes no effort to find the data I suppose.
It might be worthwhile to reconfigure the Scrivener manual in such a way as to consolidate the material regarding the software’s abilities (and the related generalities) to backup and sync––a new section up front and center titled Protecting Your Work. Include User actions that can and should be taken to avoid the loss of work. Topics to include the cloud, the recents list, testing the backups (yes, they’re being made, but have you opened them and taken a peek), making hard copies and just general use case matters, etc. Also include the additional insight beyond the manual that L&L has gained through the Forum and Support channels.
Additionally, consider whether this consolidation of knowledge would be valuable as a Forum pinned (locked) topic, a knowledge base article and a separate Tutorial section.
The subject’s importance, though it’s currently ably stressed in Scrivener resources, might be better served by being given special prominence. This wouldn’t prevent every catastrophe but I think it would lessen the frequency of hearing sad stories.
There is another side to the coin in that on the forum here we of course are going to see more examples of how various pieces of technology can be misused together and create problems—what we don’t see as much of are the routine cases that happen by the countless quantities every day, where this technology is used without much if any hassle at all. And it’s not just this of course; forum topics like this tend to act as an accumulator for problems in general, some of which might not even be related to the topic of this thread.
While it is possible to make a mess of things of course, the developers of systems like Dropbox have a vested interest in making sure their technology works reliably and, as much as it is possible to do so, with as few conditions for mishaps as they can engineer into it. Our simple two-point checklist in the original post here will avoid all known problems that cannot easily be solved by engineering—the human element you could say.
If you are mindful of those things, then you really don’t have anything to worry about. Lightning strikes aside.
It might be useful to go back to the very first paragraph in this thread, and reclaim a portion of what the discussion here was originally intended to be framed upon:
This paragraph is referring to a period of time in which we did have a sticky post with a bunch of dire warnings and bold face text, written by yours truly. It was originally written before these technologies were fully understood, and before we narrowed down all known problems with them to a few basic procedural mistakes that were easy to make. At this point in time, the original post I made is entirely obsolete.
If we did not feel that this technology was fundamentally safe to use with Scrivener we would not have spent months building a sync architecture based upon it for the iOS version, after all.
Take a look at a few other software manuals, even for programs that are very similar to Scrivener in architecture, susceptible to precisely the same kind of misuse, and see how much time is spent warning people about how dangerous it is use to Dropbox (it’s not), and how one should spend hours building and learning layers of safety nets before even thinking about using it (they don’t).
It’s a bit of a tricky line I think—between making sure good practices are shared and readily available, and perhaps overreacting to cases where technology is misused, and using that as a basis for disclaimer style documentation. Don’t drink the bleach and don’t delete all of your backups.
Where is the line. 
Most companies are not talking about leaving your hard drive plugged in while saving, or going into great detail over how to use the Dropbox status indicator, etc. While I can’t confess to knowing where the line is best put, I don’t think our problem is, based on observation of others, in not saying enough.
YES It should be in the Quick Tutorial, or linked from it.
[quote=“AmberV”]
There is another side to the coin in that on the forum here we of course are going to see more examples of how various pieces of technology can be misused together and create problems—what we don’t see as much of are the routine cases that happen by the countless quantities every day, where this technology is used without much if any hassle at all. And it’s not just this of course; forum topics like this tend to act as an accumulator for problems in general, some of which might not even be related to the topic of this thread.
While it is possible to make a mess of things of course, the developers of systems like Dropbox have a vested interest in making sure their technology works reliably and, as much as it is possible to do so, with as few conditions for mishaps as they can engineer into it. Our simple two-point checklist in the original post here will avoid all known problems that cannot easily be solved by engineering—the human element you could say.
If you are mindful of those things, then you really don’t have anything to worry about. Lightning strikes aside.
*I had no way of knowing that I was “misusing” the software. Why not put the simple two-step formula in the Quick Tutorial?
I wouldn’t say you were misusing Scrivener. The tutorial does link to those tips, though I wouldn’t say that should be in the quick start track. That is for learning how to type into the editor and such, quite a bit more basic than best practices for hooking up multiple computers together.
Understood, including the fact that forum posts and/or comments made elsewhere don’t reflect the experiences of the vast majority of Scrivener users.
L&L’s coding and competency reputation is indisputable. In addition, the care shown to its customers is an example that others should emulate.
I have read a couple and their shortcomings are numerous. Scrivener’s documentation is some of the finest I’ve read.
I honestly don’t know where the line should be drawn but I’ll know it when I see it. 
As a side benefit (my evaluation), it would effectively be a disclaimer, you’re right. Granted, some people will always expect things to just work automagically and not bother to protect themselves from inevitable computer/software/self failure even if the proposed section became a reality, but it is what it is.
My proposal isn’t based on L&L not saying enough. They/you say plenty and say it well. Nor is it an expression of disapproval of L&L’s effort to date regarding the subject. Maybe I should have been explicit about that in my initial post. I believe in personal responsibility and often don’t understand how anyone can be so haphazard with their work. Again, it is what it is. My prompt to post was a result of reading multiple stories of words lost, none of which were lost because of Scrivener, the software, and despite that, L&L has sometimes been blamed. In fact because of Scrivener’s design and/or with the help given here by Support staff and benevolent members, many of the words supposed lost were recovered.
My proposed additions to the documentation which already exists don’t include “plug in the drive” before backing up kind of information. Although encouragement (not step by step demonstrations) to learn the basics and possibly, generally point to where they can do so––“it is your data, your work, after all”––would be welcome. I was thinking more on the lines of, in example, an expansion of the manual’s cautionary advice concerning the use of ‘recents’. There were excellent Forum posts recently on the subject.
Even without any additions, the main job of the section, its usefulness as a tool, is to act as a collection point for the important information currently available under a distinct and prominent heading as a means of reducing loss. As it is now, it is available but is scattered within the documentation. Its availability would be a ready resource and reminder for those who care to protect themselves. For those who don’t, it would be a response in answer to their point of the finger to anyone but themselves.
I apologize for going off-topic (and long-winded) here and understand if my posts are moved or deleted. The only excuse I have for any spelling and grammatical errors, or post length and lack of clarity, is haste, sorry. I’ve made the suggestion in good faith as just that, a suggestion, not an attempt to tell L&L what to do. The evidence says that you already know what to do.
The concept of ”cloud storage” sometimes seems to confuse people. I have seen several posts in here where people describe their scenario as if files are either on their computer or on Dropbox, in the cloud. So when syncing with an iDevice they describe it as a situation where they think they have Scrivener on a Mac and on the iDevice, but the projects are on neither as they are ”on Dropbox”. They don’t seem to understand that the files are saved on their HD and then copied to the Dropbox server.
If anything should be clarified, maybe it is this very basic concept? With a drawing of what it really means? (project on your Mac in the Dropbox folder, backup stored elsewhere on the HD, same project copied to the Dropbox server, same project copied to the iDevice; editing on the iDevice, the process backwards)