OneDrive Advisory (Windows 8 Only)

OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) on Windows 8 uses a feature called "Smart Files" which does not keep all files available offline automatically. This causes problems syncing and opening Scrivener projects kept live in OneDrive. This often manifests as an error message that reads "This project is incompatible with this version of Scrivener", but the actual problem is that some of the project files are inaccessible to Scrivener.

Note that this issue does not impact any other version of Windows, since the "Smart Files" feature was only available on Windows 8.

To resolve this issue, you can either instruct Windows to keep all files available offline, or you can enable Scrivener to work with OneDrive files.

To configure Windows to use all files offline:

  • Swipe in from the right edge of the screen, and then tap Settings. (If you're using a mouse, point to the lower-right corner of the screen, move the mouse pointer up, and then click Settings.)
  • Tap or click Options, and then turn on Access all files offline.

To configure Scrivener to work with OneDrive files:

  • Locate the Scrivener installation directory on your hard drive. This is usually one of the following

    C:\Program Files\Scrivener

    C:\Program Files (x86)\Scrivener

  • Right-click on the Scrivener.exe file and select "Properties" from the contextual menu.

  • Select the Compatibility tab.

  • Check the box that reads Enable this program to work with OneDrive files .

If you continue to have trouble opening the projects on Windows 8 (e.g. getting a message that the project is "incompatible with this version of Scrivener") or are not seeing your changes in the project, we advise switching to a different service.