How Do I Override Sync Direction?

[ScottyDM (Scott)]

I’m a Long-time Scrivener and Aeon Timeline user. Upgraded to Aeon v3 when it came out, but it was so different from v2, and I just wanted to get on with my Scrivener project, that I stuck with Aeon v2. But now I’m doing a restructuring of my Scrivener project and realized it’s time to upgrade to Aeon v3. After a bit of experimentation I upgraded my Aeon v2 file to v3, rather than create a fresh v3 file.

I’d done things between Scrivener and Aeon v2 that v3 doesn’t quite understand, so I’ve had to work on what syncs with what.

My latest issue is event titles between Scrivener and Aeon v3. I finally got Aeon to recognize they should be synced, but Aeon thinks its version of the title is the latest. It is not. In Aeon v2 I could override direction of sync. I don’t see how to do that in Aeon v3. It wants to overwrite all my Scrivener event titles. I’ve got about 150 events.

How do I tell Aeon to accept Scrivener’s event titles?

[AeonRob (Rob Steep)]

Hi @ScottyDM I get the feeling we might need to dig into this one a bit more to give you the assistance you need.

Would it be possible for you to send through a copy of your Timeline and Scrivener project files so we can have a look? It’ll help us replicate what you are seeing and work out what the issue is.

You can email them to us at support@aeontimeline.com

If you have concerns about sending over your entire Scrivener project, we only need the .scrivx file (which just has the binder and custom metadata information, not the content of the documents). You can access this file by right-clicking on the Scrivener project in Finder and choosing Show Package Contents.

Thanks!

[ScottyDM (Scott)]

Thank you, AeonRob, but I’ve fixed it by retyping the desired titles into Aeon, so my files have changed. I don’t remember what I did to get the condition where Aeon thinks the newer Scrivener title is older than the Aeon title.

In Aeon v2 each item was individually synced, which is time consuming and requires the Scrivener project be closed. But the power of v2 is that you could override the direction, or pick a direction if Aeon thought both sources had changed since last sync.

Maybe this should be a feature request, controlled via the “Linked Items” list (right side) when an individual event is selected. Unfortunately I’ve got my project’s .scrivx file open in VSCode (after doing a backup) because I’m trying to figure something out. Maybe I can set up a sync event later and take a screenshot.

Thanks.

[AeonRob (Rob Steep)]

Hey @ScottyDM you should still get the option to choose which version of the title to keep when syncing items for the first time, or when the title is changed to something different in both apps.

Start by selecting the scene in the sync panel, clicking Change, selecting the version in the other app, and then choosing which version you want to keep.

[ScottyDM (Scott)]

Hi, Rob:

Don’t see “Change” in any view (Timeline, Spreadsheet, Relationship, etc…). I fixed my old Title sync issue by redoing the titles in Scrivener—it was about time I did so. But now I got a new sync-direction problem.

I’m setting Keywords in Scrivener, which synchronize as Tags in Aeon. What I really want is to use Keywords in Aeon’s Subway view, but that goes into the Wish List. Meanwhile I’m using Keywords as Story Arcs (plot and subplots, to get a handle on what I’ve got for developmental edits.) Works pretty good in Scrivener, but it’s no Subway view. Here is my list in Scrivener:

And here is how I’m using it in Scrivener:

The first problem is that Aeon was being evil and reordering the Tags/Keywords, and then turning that eff’d up order back to Scrivener. I don’t care what Aeon does in Aeon, but when gazing upon those little colored blocks in Scrivener, I want the order to stay the way I put it.

So I “fixed” it be deleting all the Tags in Aeon. My thinking was I could mess with editing Keywords and that would reset Aeon’s sync direction to favor Scrivener.

The Giant, Colossal, We-Gotta-Fix-This problem, is that now it doesn’t matter what I do in Scrivener, Aeon wants to delete all my Keywords. I’ve found a scene where I’ve tweaked something in Scrivener (Synopsis), which Aeon recognizes as changed, but it still insists It also needs to delete all my Scrivener Keywords. I don’t see the view you see in the Inspector panel:

Nothing clickable. Nothing selectable.

My Aeon file was converted from v2, so that may be the root of this problem.

Thank you so much for your help.

[ScottyDM (Scott)]

SOLVED

I think I guessed right. The problem is probably because the .aeon file was converted from v2 to v3, and that left some sort of cruft inside the file that interferes with sync direction.

I created a brand new Aeon file, solved a few syncing issues, ignored others (for now), and got a clean file. Then I accidentally told Aeon to delete a bunch of housekeeping Events from Scrivener. I dragged them out of the Scrivener’s trash, updated their Synopses in Scrivener (different issue), and tried to sync them again. Aeon thought they were brand new Events and wanted to make new copies—oops, wrong. I saw I could easily reconnect the two versions in Aeon, and got this:

OMG, it says “Use from Scrivener” or “Use from Timeline”. This is (probably) what I should have been seeing all along.

Currently Event Color refuses to sync, but that’s a different problem for a different thread.

[wedgegreene]

I had a similar issue when converting from Aeon v2 to v3. I settled on dleting old timeline and sync’ed a fresh v3 aeon from then current Scrivner manuscript. But then I ordered aeon manuscript to try and reflect the non-time sequential order of the original manuscript. Aeon foced these changes into Scrivner. I ended of refreshing to a prior backup of my Scrivner manuscript. Now I do not sync at all and Aeon only gets used for small scene tracking.
So how do I get that wonderful choice of which takes precidence shown above in that sync window. I do not see that choice… is it because there are too many changes between syncs? Should I try again from scratch and sync every edit session? Is it that I’m sync’ing a full reorder in manuscript mode when I do the manuscript order in Scrivner. Should I just not use manuscript mode at all?

[SCN (Steve)]

I believe you cannot instruct AT3 in which direction to sync. If a change is made in AT3, it will sync that change to Scrivener, and vice versa. If a change was made in AT3 that conflicts with a change in Scrivener, it will not perform the sync but will instead alert you to conform AT3 and Scrivener to the same value regarding other conflict.

As I mentioned in the parallel discussion, if it were me, I would perform the initial sync, make the changes necessary in both AT3 and Scrivener to bring them into conformity, then sync again. If this is what you actually did, yet got the results you reported, I’d try conforming them on more time. If that still didn’t work, I’d ask for help from support.