Accessing Scripture files in Mac version of SAB 9.2.4

Scripture App Builder
1

I have now run into a problem adding new books and updating old ones in our SAB project. Under Books, Main Collection there is the “Add Books” button. This opens a “Select Books” dialog box, but using this dialog box I cannot navigate to my Paratext 8 Projects folder which is inside my Parallels Desktop Windows 10 virtual machine.

Over a year ago when I was last using SAB this was possible, but not straightforward. The “Add Books” button opened some kind of a standard macOS dialog box. It was not possible to navigate to the Paratext project folder just using this dialog box, but using a standard Mac trick, I could open a regular Finder window, navigate to my Paratext project folder and drag that folder to the “Select Books” dialog box. This established a link between SAB and my Paratext project folder, and I could add new books to the SAB project and update old ones from their original location.

The “Select Books” dialog box in the present version of SAB does not seem to be a native macOS dialog box and therefore I can’t drag a folder to it. And because I can’t navigate to my Scripture files, I am stuck. I could copy-paste my Paratext data folder to somewhere where SAB can access it, but that would be the last resort. There must be a way to open my scripture files from their original location.

What are other Mac users doing? Can you access your scripture files from their original location or do you copy-paste them on the Mac side where SAB can access them.

Any help welcome.

Iska

2

This works for me:

  1. Start the Windows VM
  2. Open the shared Windows drive in Finder
  3. click Add Books, navigate to /Volumes/[C] Windows/My Paratext Projects …

If you don’t first open the shared drive in Finder then the Windows drive won’t be mounted in macOS so you won’t see it under \Volumes.

Update from source works fine too if you first mount the Windows volume in Finder.

3

Thank you Eric, carefully following your instructions I am now able to navigate to my Paratext projects folder. I did not know about this “Volumes” trick. For years, I used to drag the Paratext project folder from Finder to the Add Books dialog box and when that stopped working I was unable to see other ways to do it. I am happy that your solution is now out here for all Mac users to see.