If you're a seasoned Scrivener hand you doubtless know this trick already. But Scrivener seems to be getting a lot of new fans at the moment so perhaps a few have missed it. Here we go: how to get safe, offsite online backups every time you open and/or close a manuscript, without even thinking.

First you need a <a class="zem_slink" title="Dropbox" rel="homepage" href="http://www.dropbox.com">Dropbox</a> account, paid or free, or some other form of online storage that can be made to look like a folder. This trick only works for Scrivener 2 on the Mac at the moment by the way, though doubtless it's on its way to the coming Windows version at some stage.

<!--more-->It's not a great idea to copy Scrivener document files straight to online storage. While they may look like simple files to you they are in fact folders, full of text, images, pdfs, even videos if you've dragged them into your project. If you copy the standard 'document' you run the risk of it getting corrupted if some small part of it goes wrong syncing between your online version and your local one.

<img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6601" title="Scrivener backup" src="http://vir.liquidweb.com/~davidhe4/davidhewson.com//wp-content/uploads/2011/01/scrivener-backup1.png" alt="" width="490" height="290" />

Scrivener 2 gets round this problem very neatly. Go to Preferences and open the Backup pane. Here's what mine looks like. Point the backup location to your Dropbox folder. Choose to save as zip files, use the date in the filename, and select how many copies you want to keep. Zipping your document turns it into a single, compressed file, so the chances of corruption pretty much disappear. It also makes it fast for Dropbox to upload.

I choose to backup whenever I close the file. Do it on open or manual save and you end up with millions of backup copies which is a bit pointless. But it's your choice.

Like this, every time I close Scrivener a zipped copy of the latest version gets placed in the Dropbox folder and backed up straight away. Plus I have all four previous version there as well.

This is also a very reliable way of sharing Scrivener files with other Macs using the software. Possibly better than copying plain files for the reasons already stated.

Using this simple routine ensures your work is safely stored offsite, and accessible through other computers. It's about as disaster-proof as you can get, and absolutely free if your storage needs are modest enough for an unpaid Dropbox account.