Incompat/Corrupted Project Files [User Workaround/Fix]

If you are getting either the “project is incompatible” message or the “Scrivener has encountered a problem and needs to close” message, this is how I work around it.

My fix for corrupted projects:

1.) Open your corrupted “Project” file by right clicking the project file Scrivener icon (the yin yang “S” file) within your project folder and selecting to open with wordpad or notepad or another simple text editor. (*Alternatively, open the project file from within the text editor by selecting the “open any file” option when browsing your project.scriv folder.)

2.) In word pad, “cut” or “copy” everything out between and .

3.) Open Scrivener from a non-corrupted tutorial or other project file. If you have no noncorrupted tutorials or files to open it from, you will have to redownload a Scrivener beta and open it from the tutorial. After opening Scrivener successfully, create a “dummy project” – just an empty project for the purposes of creating an uncorrupted base project file.

4.) Open the dummy project file in wordpad or notepad. Delete everything between and .

5.) Paste in the stuff you cut/copied between and that was in your old, corrupted project file. Save and close.

6.) Move the dummy project file to your corrupted project folder. Replace your old project file, or back this project file up in a separate folder before replacing.

7.) Your corrupted file is now replaced and your binder should open as it used to.

I did what you said, and now all I have is a huge mess of stuff. Now it just opens in notepad, rather than my binder in Scrivener.

I’ve lost 2 days of work on my project, and I am really upset.

What can I do to get my project back?

This happens in Win7 and Vista when the file extensions get changed. What happened was that notepad/wordpad changed your file to a .txt file. You have to delete that file extension by first going into my computer, hitting the alt key to get the menu to appear, go to tools, then folder options, then click on the view tab, and uncheck “Hide extensions for known file types”.

Used the fix above but have had no success.

Problem does not appear to be with the binder code, as trying the above fix resulted in the binder looking right folder wise, but without content. When I copied the content folders across, I again got a message that the project is incompatible with the current version of Scrivener.

I’m using Vista on a Dell Inspiron. My computer did shut down last night while Scrivener was still open. The tutorial file still opens perfectly well.

I figured out (in a sense) why StarTigress’s fix is working, and so I posted an update for a fix that should preserve all the meta-data (which will otherwise be lost if all you’re copying is what’s between the tags).

Adelheid, give it a try and see if it works for you…

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