Tutorial scrivener

7/25/2019 Tutorial scrivener

1/77

Tutorial

1

Just a quick note before we begin: this tutorial assumes that you are using

the default preferences. If necessary, you can reset them to the defaults by

clicking on the Defaults button in the Preferences pane, available under

Scrivener > Preferences (click on Show All in the Preferences toolbar to

see the Defaults button if it is not visible); if you havent made any changes

to the preferences, you dont need to worry about this. Right, on with the

tutorial.

When you first open a Scrivener project, by default you are presented

with two panes:

1. THEBINDER

On the left, you can see a list of files: the binder. This is an outline view

that contains three default folders: Draft, Research, and Trash. You can

rename these folders to whatever you like by double-clicking on them (in

some of the templates, for instance, the Draft folder has been renamed toManuscript). The binder is where you organise your project by creating a

structure and dragging and dropping your documents around.

The contents of the Draft folder represent the text fragments that will be

compiled into one long document when you export or print using File >

Compile, which is the standard way of preparing your finished project for

printing or final formatting in a dedicated word processor. This is very muchthe raison dtreof Scrivener - to assemble the text of your manuscript in the

Draft folder for printing or export. (As such, the Draft folder is unique in that

it can onlyhold text files.)

The Research folder can hold text or media files (images, PDF files, video

files and so on), and is where media files will be placed by default if you

accidentally try to import them into the Draft folder at any point. You dont

have to put all research files into the Research folder, though - you can create


2/77

Tutorial

2

other folders for your support materials anywhere you want (and even give

them custom icons).

The Trash folder speaks for itself; whenever you delete a document it

ends up there. Documents arent deleted completely until you select Empty

Trash from the File menu- so theres no way you can accidentally delete a

file in Scrivener.

2. THEEDITOR

Next to the binder you have the main editor, which displays the current

document. The main editor is what you are looking at right now as you read

this text document. There are several ways to load a document in the editor,

but the one you will use most often is simply selecting a file in the binder, as

you did to load this one. Scrivener allows you to create or import any number

of text documents. You can also import image, web, QuickTime and PDF

documents. To import documents, use File > Import > Files or simply drag

the files you wish to import from the Finder into the binder of your Scrivenerproject.

You can change the current document by clicking on another item in the

binder. Try that nowclick on Alhambra inside the Research folder (you

may need to expand the Research folder by clicking on the triangle next to it

first) and then return here (Step 1: Beginnings).

Done that? So now you know that this area can be used to view different

types of document, not just text.

Lets try switching between documents again. You see the document on

the left beneath this one, the one entitled Step 2: Header View? Click on it

now.


3/77

Tutorial

3

You have just switched between documents. You might use different

documents for different chapters, different scenes, different ideas, articles,

characters, whatever you want. There are other ways of switching between

documents, too. Another one you will use frequently is the header view. See

that bar at the top of the text, the one that has the arrows on the left of it and

says Step 2: Header View in it? Well, that is the header view (which is

sometimes also referred to as the header bar). You can rename the document

by clicking into the title of the header view, and there are several options

available in a menu if you click on the icon next to the title.

The arrows on the left of the header view that point left and right are the

history navigation buttons and work much like Safaris navigation arrows -

they allow you step back and forth through the documents you have had

open in the editor. The white up and down arrows on the right of the header

bar step through the contents of the binder sequentially. To see the difference,

try the following:

Click on the Alhambra image document in the Research folder again

and then click on the left arrow in the header view. You will be returned

to this document, because this was the one you had open last.

Click on the right arrow and you will be returned to the Alhambra

image document again. (Make sure you come back here afterwards

though!)

Now, with this document open, click on the down arrow on the right and

then click on the up arrow again to return here. Note how the down

arrow takes you to the next document in the binder, whereas the right

arrow takes you to the next document in the navigation history.

While were here, note that the selection highlight in the binder does not

necessarily follow what is being displayed in the main editorif you change


4/77

Tutorial

4

the contents of the editor using the navigation arrows, for instance, the

selection in the binder will not change. You can thus navigate around using

the header view without losing track of the original document on which you

were working in the binder. Note however that the up/down arrows doaffect

binder selection because they are intended as an alternative way of navigating

through the binder contents.

Another useful way of switching documents is to drag a document from

the binder into a header view. Try this nowgrab the document entitled Step

3: Footer View on the left and drag it into the header view above. The

navigation bar will turn grey, and when you let go the document will

change

You may notice that as with the history navigation buttons, dragging a

document into the header bar does not affect the binder selection. If you ever

find that after navigating through multiple documents you are not sure wherethe current document is located in the binder, you can simply use View >

Reveal in Binder (Opt-Cmd-R) to force the binder to show you where you are.

Try that now.

Okay, so lets get familiar with the editor. At the bottom of the window,

you can see a grey bar containing a pop-up button with a percentage in it

(100% by default) and a live word and character count. This is the footer

view. Try typing something in the yellow area below:

Hello world!

Done that? You will see that the word and character count in the footer

view changes as you type. Now try changing the percentage in the popup-


5/77

Tutorial

5

button at the bottom, too (click on it and select a new percentage)you will

see that you can make the text bigger or smaller; useful for tired eyes.

SCRIPTWRITINGMODE

The footer view will change depending on what you are viewing inside

the document. For instance, if you are typing a script (such as a movie

screenplay), the footer view will give you information on the various script

elements. Try selecting Format > Scriptwriting > Script Mode - Screenplay

from the main menu now. The word and character count will disappear and

you will see another pop-up menu appear on the right saying General

Text (this just means that the currently selected text isnt recognised as a part

of a screenplay). Click into the text on the line below:

CLICK INTO THIS TEXT.

Now try selecting different elements from the pop-up menu on the right

of the footer view. You will see that the above text automatically gets

reformatted to the script element you selected, and the footer view will show

what will happen if you press the tab or enter keys (which will move you to

the next script element). Note that you can hit Shift-Cmd-Y to bring up that

menu automatically and then hit one of the keys specified in the menu to

select an element without taking your hands off the keyboard (you can also

use Opt-Cmd and the number keys to change elements).

Scriptwriting mode is saved on a document-by-document basis, so you

can switch between documents that use script formatting and regular text

documents. The icons of documents in the binder that use scriptwriting mode

are yellow so that you can easily tell them apart from other text documents.

Right, lets return to normal prose mode now - select Format >


6/77

Tutorial

6

Scriptwriting > Script Mode - Screenplay again to deselect screenplay mode.

NOTE:

If you ever find that the word and character count has disappeared from

the footer bar, it is most likely because you have accidentally switched into

scriptwriting mode, so even if youre not writing a script its a good idea to

familiarise yourself with how to enter or leave scriptwriting mode, as

described above.

OTHERFILES

For PDF files, the footer view allows you to navigate between the pages.

Click on spacewalk_info in the Research folder to test this out, and then

come back here by clicking on the back arrow in the header view.

All good so far, I hope. Now lets familiarise ourselves with some other

basic features. Click on Step 4: Composition Mode in the binder.

Composition Mode is a very nice feature for blocking everything else out

while you write. Im not going to pretend its innovative or anythingI think

Blue-Tec (now called The Soulmen), the creators of Ulysses, were the first to

implement something like this for a text editorbut it is very handy. Either

hit Opt-Cmd-F or click on Compose in the toolbar above do it now!

You should now be in composition modeits just you and your text.

(Composition Mode is essentially a full screen mode, but we call it

Composition Mode to avoid confusion with OS X Lions full screen feature,

which Scrivener also supports.)


7/77

Tutorial

7

Some things you need to know about composition mode:

1) Move your mouse to the bottom of the screen. You will see that a

control panel appears, similar to the one in iPhoto. From here you can change

the text scale, set the position and width of the paper (the text column), fade

the background in and out and view the word and character counts of the

document. There are also buttons for displaying the keywords panel and

Inspector (we wont go into that right now, though, as we have yet to talk

about keywords and notescome back and try them out once youve gone

through the rest of the tutorial) and for exiting composition mode. You can

also hit Opt-Cmd-F or the Escape key to exit composition mode.

2) You can only enter composition mode for text documents.

3) By default, composition mode uses typewriter scrolling (another

Ulysses first, I believe). This simply means that as you type, the text willremain in the centre of the screen vertically so that you dont have to stare at

the bottom of the screen all the time. You can turn this off via Format >

Options > Typewriter Scrolling (Ctrl-Cmd-T), and you can also turn it on for

the main editor if you wish.

4) You can customise the look of composition mode. You can use the

Appearance pane of the Preferences to change the background colours and

you can change the colour of the text in composition mode via the Compose

pane of the Preferences (so you could set it up to have a retro green-text-on-

black-background look, for instance). You can even add a background image,

if you want, by going to View > Composition Mode Backdrop.

Okay, lets move on to Step 5: The Inspector while still in composition


8/77

Tutorial

8

mode. To do so, move the cursor to the top of the screen so that the menu bar

appears. Then, from the View menu, choose Go To > Draft > Part 1: Basics >

Step 5: The Inspector.

You can leave composition mode now by hitting the Escape key on your

keyboard.

Weve now covered the basics of navigating between documents and

using composition mode for distraction-free writing. Now its time to meet the

Inspector.

Click on Inspector in the toolbar (the blue disc on the right, with the i

inside it - you may need to widen the window a little if its not visible). A third

pane will appear on the right of this view.

You may find this text a little scrunched up now. If so, click on the green

zoom button at the very the top-left of the window (the third traffic-light

button that appears in most OS X windows - if you have changed your system

settings to Graphite, the traffic light buttons will all be grey, of course). In

Scrivener, the zoom button is your friend. When you click on it, Scrivener

does its best to resize the window to accommodate all elements. (You can

change the default width of the editor in Preferences.)

Right, lets look at the inspector. At the bottom of the inspector, in the

footer bar, you will see these buttons:


9/77

Tutorial

9

The padlock button on the far right allows you to lock the inspector to

a particular editor when the editor is split - we wont worry about that for

now, though, as we havent looked at splitting the editor yet. The other

buttons allow you to choose what to view in the inspector (the number of

buttons that appear will depend on what you are viewing in the current

editor). The last two buttons, Snapshots and Comments (the one with the

camera and the one with the n inside a square speech bubble) are only

available for text documents, for instance. An asterisk next to one of the icons

tells you that there is content in that part of the inspector.

To begin with, make sure the leftmost button, Notes, is selected, and

then click on the next document in the binder, 5a: The Synopsis Index Card.

The first thing you will notice is the index card at the top. This appears in

the Notes, References and Keywords panes of the inspector (but not in the

Snapshots or Comments panes which require more space). The index card is

an important concept in Scrivener. You can type a synopsis of your document

into the body of the index card (note the header of the index card can be used

to rename the document, too). One of the core ideas behind Scrivener is that

every document (or chunk of text, or image, or whatever) is associated with a

synopsis, which is represented in the inspector by the index card. You can

then view these synopses in different ways (which we will come to later)

which will make outlining and organising your work easier. The best way to

understand this is to imagine that each document in Scrivener is a sheet of


10/77


11/77

Tutorial

11

Label and Status

Label and status are just arbitrary tags you can assign to your document.

You can set up the project labels and status list via Project > Meta-Data

Settings You might, for instance, rename Label to POV (for Point of

View) and use it to hold the name of the point-of-view character for each

document. This way, you could easily run a search on all chapters that have a

particular character as the protagonist by searching on label only (by typing

the name of the character in the search field in the toolbar and then choosing

Labelor POV if you have renamed it suchfrom Search in in the

search options menu, which can be accessed by clicking on the arrow next to

the magnifying glass in the search field). Status works much the same, except

that it is meant to keep track of the state of the documentfor instance,

Finished, To do, A mess and so forthalthough you can rename it and

use it for something completely different, should you so wish.

Created/Modified Date

Switch between the created and modified date by clicking on the arrows

next to where it says Created: or Modified:. No surprises hereas you

would expect, the created date holds the date and time the document was first

created and the modified date holds the date and time the document was last

modified and saved.

Include in Compile, Page Break Before and Compile As-Is

These options affect how the document is compiled when you come to

export or print the draft (which we will come to later). They only have any


12/77

Tutorial

12

meaning if the document is contained inside the Draft folder. They are mostly

self-explanatory: Include in Compile specifies whether the document

should be included in or omitted from the draft when exported or printed;Page Break Before specifies whether the document should have a page

break before it (useful if it marks the beginning of a chapter, for instance);

Compile As-Is tells the compilation process not to change the formatting or

insert a title for this particular document, no matter what the Compile settings

are.

Next, lets look at the Notes pane.

At the bottom of the inspector is the notes area, where you can jot down

anything you want that will help you with your document. If you click in the

notes header bar (where it says Document Notes), you can flip betweenDocument Notes and Project Notes. As you would imagine, document notes

are specific to each document and will change depending on the document

you are viewing in the current editor, whereas project notes can be viewed

from any document (project notes can also be seen in the inspector when you

select one of the special root foldersDraft, Research and Trashwhich have

no associated meta-data or synopses). You can have multiple project notes

associated with your project (new project notes can be added using the Project

Notes window, available from the Project menu).

Please click on 5d: References in the binder.


13/77

Tutorial

13

Click on the next button in the inspector footer bar, the one with the

picture of several book spines on it. This switches to the References pane

(the index card and meta-data area will remain where they are, only the noteswill disappear to be replaced by a list of references). The references pane

allows you to store references to other documents within the project, on your

hard-disk or on the internet. By clicking on the + button, you can choose to

add a reference to a file on disk or you can select a document inside the

project. You can also drag documents from the binder or the Finder (or the

URL from a browser address field) into the references table. Double-clicking

on the icon of a reference will open it: external references open in their default

application; internal references open inside Scrivener (you can determine

exactly where the latter get opened in the Navigation pane of the

Preferences). Note that, as with notes, you can store references at the

document or project level - click on the bar where it says DocumentReferences to flip between Document References (which are specific to the

current document) and Project References (which can be viewed from any

document).

Next click on the key button at the bottom of the inspector to view the

keywords pane and then move onto 5e: Keywords.

As well as Label and Status, you can also assign keywords to your

documents. Keywords are useful for adding arbitrary tags to documents that

you can use when searching. So, for instance, you could add keywords for

characters that occur in a scene, the location a scene takes place, the theme,


14/77

Tutorial

14

authors referenced, or anything else (or you can just ignore keywords

completely). You can add keywords by clicking on the + button, or by

hitting enter while another keyword is selected. You can also assign keywordsvia the keywords panel. Open that now by clicking on the Keywords button

in the toolbar (the black box with the key inside it).

A translucent black panel will appear. This shows all of the keywords

that you have created or assigned to documents so far. You can also create

keywords inside this panel and drag them to the keywords table in the

Inspector. You can change the colour associated with a keyword by double-

clicking on the colour chip in the keywords panel. (Another way of assigning

keywords is by dragging them onto documents in the binder or the outliner

and corkboard views that we will look at later, or by dragging them into the

header view. You can assign keywords to multiple documents at once byselecting the documents in the binder and then dragging the keywords from

the keywords panel onto the selection.)

Try dragging the keyword entitled Assign this one to the keywords

table.

When assigning keywords from the panel, you can optionally assign the

groups to which they belong as well. To see this in action, click on the triangle

next to Characters in the black keywords panel to reveal the names of some

characters. If you dragged the name of one of these characters to the keywords

pane in the inspector, only the name of the character would get assigned.


15/77

Tutorial

15

However, try holding down the Option key whilst dragging John to the

keywords pane in the inspector. Note how not only the keyword John gets

added, but also the name of its group, Characters.

A quick way of searching for documents that have been assigned

particular keywords is to select the keywords you want to search for in the

keywords panel and then click on the Search button at the bottom. (If you

hold down the Option key, the Search button will change to Search All,

which will search for the selected keywords wherever they occur in the

project, including text, notes and so on, rather than limiting the search to the

keywords associated with documents.)

Now click on 5f: Custom Meta-Data in the binder.

If you click on the button at the bottom of the inspector with the icon of a

tag on it, you will by default be presented with a blank grey area with the

message No Meta-Data Fields Defined and a button with the title Define

Meta-Data Fields. This area can be populated with custom meta-data that

you create for your project, and the data that can be viewed here can also be

viewed as custom columns in the outliner. This provides a way of assigning

arbitrary information to your documents. For instance, if writing fiction, you

could add a meta-data field for the time at which a scene takes place (tip:

because custom meta-data fields are text-only, enter the date and time

backwards so that it sorts properly, e.g. 1984-12-31), or you could add a list

of characters that appear.


16/77

Tutorial

16

We first need to define some custom meta-data fields, though. Lets do

that now:

1) Click on the Define Meta-Data Fields button (alternatively, you

can choose Edit Custom Meta-Data Fields from the menu that appears

when you click on the gear button in the Custom Meta-Data bar, or select

Meta-Data Settings from the Project menu and then choose the Custom

Meta-Data tab).

2) Click on the + button in the bottom-left of the sheet that youve

opened, and enter Date into the row that gets added to the table.

3) Click on the + button again and this time enter Characters. For

this one, also click on the Wrap Text button.

4) Click OK to accept the changes and dismiss the sheet.

The Custom Meta-Data pane in the inspector will now show the two

fields you created above. Click into the field under Date and type

something, then do the same for Characters. Note that the Characters

field will expand to fit the text, because you selected Wrap Text.

You can view all custom meta-data in columns in the outliner view, too

(which is covered in Part 2).

For many projects you may not need to touch custom meta-data at all,

but if you ever find yourself wishing for an extra piece of information in the

outliner or inspector, then its good to know that its there.


17/77

Tutorial

17

Next onto one of Scriveners most useful features for editing documents:

Snapshots.

As a writer, the chances are that you will on occasion be nervous about

committing changes to your text. This is what the Snapshots feature is for.

Before embarking on the editing of a document, you can click on Take

Snapshot (cmd-5) in the Documents > Snapshots menu. You will hear the

sound of a camera shutter which indicates that the snapshot has been taken.

Lets try that now

Once you have taken a snapshot, you can edit your document safe in the

knowledge that you can return to the old version any time you so wish. Click

on the Snapshots button (the one with the picture of a camera on it) in the

inspector footer bar to see what I mean (you can also switch directly to the

Snapshots pane and have the inspector open if necessary by going to

Documents > Snapshots > Show Snapshots). The inspector now shows a list of

snapshots at the top, which should consist of the one you took and one I took

while writing the first version of this tutorial back in 2006. Clicking on a

snapshot in the list reveals its text in the lower part of the inspector. You can

restore an older version of your text by selecting the version you want from

the list and then clicking on Roll Back at the top (at which point, you will be

given the option of taking another snapshot of your current version, just in

case you forgot).

If you wish to know what you have changed in the document since the

snapshot was taken, click on Compare. Do that now - select the snapshot

that was taken on the 23rdAugust 2006 and click on Compare. The text in


18/77

Tutorial

18

the inspector will change to show what has been added or removed. Text that

has been added to the document since the snapshot was taken appears

underlined and in blue; text that has been deleted appears struck out and in

red. Note that the comparison only shows textualchanges - it does not show

changes to the formatting.

Click on the left and right arrows at the top of the inspector, next to the

Roll Back button, to navigate between the changes.

You can alter the granularity (level of detail) of the comparison by

clicking on the downwards-pointing arrow next to the Compare button

(which should now read Original, because clicking on it again will switch

back to showing the text of the snapshot without any comparisons). Often you

will find that changing the granularity will give you different results on

different documents, depending on the scope of the edits. You will usually get

the best results by leaving By Paragraph ticked but playing with ByClause and By Word.

You can also compare the differences between two snapshots by selecting

two different snapshots in the list and clicking on Compare: if one snapshot

is selected, clicking on Compare compares it with the current version of the

text; if two snapshots are selected, they are compared against each other.

If you ever want more space to read through a snapshot - if you find the

inspector too cramped - you can drag a snapshot from the list in the inspector

onto the header view (see Step 2) of the main editor to load it there. If you

hold the Option key down while dragging it, the snapshot will show

comparisons to the current version of the text when loaded into the editor.


19/77

Tutorial

19

So: Snapshots are very useful for keeping old versions of your text

around and for checking what you have changed.

Now lets move onto Step 5h for information on the comments and

footnotes pane.

Now well look at the Comments & Footnotes pane - dont worry

about clicking on the button in the inspector footer bar just yet though (for

your reference, though, the Comments & Footnotes button is the one with

the n. inside a square speech bubble).

Comments and footnotes in Scrivener work a little like comments in

Word, Nisus Writer or Pages, but theyre not exactly the same. Lets take a

look at them.

For a start, click on the yellow highlighted text in the sentence below:

This sentence has a comment attached[Comments get displayed and

selected as soon as they are clicked on in the main editor.].

Note how the inspector automatically switches to the Comments &

Footnotes pane, and the comment associated with the text gets highlighted.

Next, click on the grey footnote directly below the comment in the

footnote.

This sentence has a footnote attached.1

See how clicking on the note in the inspector automatically selects the


20/77

Tutorial

20

text associated with it in the main editor?

If you click on a note in the inspector, the editor will automatically scroll

to the position in the text where the note has been placed. This allows you to

use the comments and footnotes to navigate the text, so that they act like

bookmarks in a way, too. Try scrolling to the bottom of this document, and

then clicking the comment to return to the top.

ADDINGCOMMENTSANDFOOTNOTES

Lets try adding some comments and footnotes. There are a couple of

ways of doing this. First, select some of the text in the following sentence:

Select some of the text[Jose Antonio Palma P Palma, 5/30/15, 3:23 PM]in

this sentence.

Once youve selected a word or two in the above sentence, either click on

Comment in the toolbar, the + button in the top Comments & Footnotes

bar in the inspector, or hit shift-cmd-8. A new comment will be created in the

inspector and it will be selected ready for editing - add some text. Once

youve finished typing in the comment, hit the Escape key to return the focus

to the main editor.

Alternatively, you can just click into or after a word to add a comment or

footnote to it. This time, just click into the word commented below so that

the blinking insertion point (or caret) is somewhere inside it:

This sentence will be commented[Jose Antonio Palma P Palma, 5/30/15,

3:27 PM].


21/77

Tutorial

21

Again, click on Comment in the toolbar, the + button in the

inspector, or hit shift-cmd-8. Note how the whole word commented gets a

comment associated with it.

Lets try it with a footnote too. This time, place the cursor right at the end

of this sentence, after the full stop:

This sentence will have a footnote after it when exported or

printed.2

This time, click on the +fn button in the inspector (note that you can

add a Footnote icon to the toolbar by using View > Customize Toolbar,

and although there is no default keyboard shortcut associated with this action

you can add one using the OS X system preferences).

Note how the footnote gets attached to the word printed and the full

stop after it. It generally doesnt matter where you attach comments, because

they are usually for your own (or collaborators) reference only, but with

footnotes you should always ensure that the footnote link the (the grey

highlight) ends at exactly the place you want the footnote number to appear

when printed or exported. So, because we associated the footnote with the

word printed and the footnote ends at, but includes, the period at the end of

the sentence, the footnote number in the exported or printed text will appear

straight after the full stop, which is usually what you would want.

CHANGINGTHECOLOUROFCOMMENTS

You can change the colour of comments by ctrl-clicking on a comment (or


22/77

Tutorial

22

comments) in the inspector. The contextual menu offers a choice of default

colours, or you can open the colour panel to choose a custom colour. You can

also select a comment and hit shift-cmd-C to open the colour panel directly

and change the colour that way. (Note that you cannot change the colour of

footnotes, which use a single colour to differentiate them from comments,

although you can choose the colour for all footnotes in the Appearance

pane of the Preferences.

The contextual (ctrl-click) menu also allows you to convert comments to

footnotes and vice versa, and to revert comments or footnotes to their default

formatting (you can set the default fonts in the Preferences).

If you have a lot of comments, you can collapse individual comments

and footnotes by clicking on the disclosure triangle (the downward-pointing

arrow) in the top-left of each comment box. (You can also collapse or expand

all using cmd-0 or cmd-9 when the focus is in the inspector.)

Comments and footnotes are thus tucked away in the inspector until you

need them. When you come to export or print - which well come to later -

you have a lot of control over how comments and footnotes get included in

the document. For instance, you could have all comments removed but

footnotes included as proper footnotes, or you could have comments exported

as footnotes and footnotes exported as endnotes. But if that sounds

complicated, its not something you need to worry about right now - just

know that if you want to make notes on your document, or add footnotes, this

is one way to do it.

Right, onto Step 6: End of Part One!


23/77

Tutorial

23

This brings us to the end of Part 1 of the tutorial. In the next section you

will learn about different ways of viewing and organising the documents in

your Scrivener project. With that in mind, in a moment you will be asked to

click on Part 2: Organisation in the binder. As will be explained, folders -

not just folders, but well come to that shortly - can be viewed in several

modes, but for now all you need to know is that when you click on Part 2,

you want to see the text of the folder document (folders are really just a

special type of text document, and can contain text just as regular text

documents can).

So afteryou click on Part 2: Organisation, take a look at the Group

Mode segmented control in the toolbar and ensure that all modes are turned

off. The control should look like this (note how nothing is selected):

If one of the segments is selected, just click on the selected segment to

turn it off. This will leave you with just the text of Part 2 in the editor, ready

to read.

Go ahead and try that now.


24/77

Tutorial

24

Welcome to Part 2 of the tutorialyou can close Part 1 by clicking on

the triangle next to where it says Part 1 in the binder on the left. You can

also hide the Inspector by clicking on the blue disc icon in the toolbar again.

You have now learned some of the fundamental features of Scrivener.

Now its time to move on to some of the organisational features. Firstly, notice

that this document is actually a folder in the binder. There is no real difference

between text and folder documents aside from their icons, and the fact that

folder documents always have disclosure triangles next to them in the

binder (and other outline views) regardless of whether or not they have

anything inside them. Note that the folder icon for this document (Part 2:

Organisation) has a little text icon in its corner. This means that this folder

contains text - the text you are reading now. (It does not have anything to do

with the fact that it also has text documents inside it, such as Step 7 and so

on.) The other major difference between folders and text documents is the

default way they get viewed when you open them. Well come to that in Step

7.

In fact, you can convert a folder document into a text document and vice

versa very easily. Click on Part 2: Organisation in the binder to make sure it

is selected, and then go to Documents > Convert > To File in the main menu.

The folder icon changes into a text stack (the stack indicates that the text

document has subdocuments). If you go back to the Documents > Convert

menu, you will see that now you have the option of converting it back to a

folder - do that now. The idea behind this flexibility is that you can choose to

have different visual indicators for different levels of organisation, and also


25/77

Tutorial

25

you dont have to plan in advance how you structure your project, because if

you end up using a text document as a container for other files, you can

always convert it to a folder later, and vice versa.

To create new documents, click Add in the toolbar. If you hold the add

button down for half a second, a menu appears that lets you choose which

kind of document you would like to add. You can also add documents via the

Project menu, footer views and contextual menus. Hitting enter in the binder,

outliner or corkboard will also create a new document (although this

behaviour can be turned off via the Preferences).

Okay, move on to Step 7 when youre ready (you will need to expand

Part 2 by clicking on the disclosure triangle next to it). Or go get a cup of tea

and a biscuit.

Scriveners editor has four modes - four different ways of viewing your

work - and learning how and when to switch between them will make your

Scrivener experience much more comfortable. The four modes are as follows:

1. SINGLEDOCUMENTMODE

In this mode, the editor shows the contents of a single document,

whether its a text document, an image, a PDF file or whatever. The editor is in

single document mode right now.

2. CORKBOARDMODE

In corkboard mode, the editor shows the subdocumentsof the current


26/77

Tutorial

26

document as index cards on a corkboard. Lets take a look at how that works

right now:

a) Try clicking on the Part 2: Organisation folder in the binder, and then

click on the image of the corkboard in the toolbar (the one in the middle of the

group of three View/Group Mode icons) so that it is selected:

Once youve taken a look at the corkboard, return here. See how the

subdocuments of the folder you had selected appeared as index cards? If you

open the inspector right now and select the Notes pane, you will see the

index card associated with this document - which you will have seen on the

corkboard, because this document is a subdocument of the Part 2:

Organisation folder.

b) Now - well, after youve read this bit, so you know how to get back -

click on the corkboard icon again, while viewing this document. You will see

that the corkboard is blank. This is because this document (Step 7: Changing

Editor Views) doesnt have any subdocuments - but it could. After youve

seen the blank corkboard, click on the text icon to the left of the corkboardicon in the toolbar icon to see the text of the document again:


27/77

Tutorial

27

3. OUTLINERMODE

Outliner mode is much like the corkboard mode, allowing you to see the

subdocuments of the current document, except that it shows them as rows

and allows you to view various columns of information. Try repeating

everything you did for the corkboard mode above, but this time instead of

choosing the corkboard icon, click the outliner icon on the right (and

remember to come back here afterwards):

4. SCRIVENINGS MODE

Scrivenings is the term for Scriveners combined text mode, and it is

one of Scriveners coolest features. It allows you to view or edit multiple text

documents as a composite - as though they were one long document.

Scrivenings mode is available when there are multiple documents available to

view as one. If you look at the View Mode control in the toolbar at the

moment, you will see that the left-most icon shows a single sheet of paper.

This indicates that the composite text mode is not available here, because you

are viewing a single document that has no subdocuments. So, lets look at one

that does.

After reading this part, once more click on Part 2: Organisation in the

binder. When you do so, you will notice that the View Mode icon in the

toolbar changes. In fact, it even gets renamed - it becomes Group Mode:


28/77

Tutorial

28

(You will notice that when you select the Part 2 folder again, it returns

to outliner mode - this is because Scrivener remembers which mode you last

used to view a group, and will automatically use it for viewing groups until

you change it again.)

The single text icon on the left has now changed into a stack of paper.

This means that it is possible to enter Scrivenings mode. To do so, you simply

click on the button with the icon of the stack of papers. Try that with the Part

2 folder now, and after selecting the stack of papers icon scroll all the way

down to the bottom of the editor, then return here by clicking back on Step 7

in the binder.

Done that? You should have seen that the text from all the various

subdocuments of the Part 2 folder - including this one - were combined into

one long document, with dividers between them. You could have edited the

text, and your changes would have automatically been applied to all of the

individual files you altered.

WHATTOREMEMBERWHENSWITCHINGVIEWS

Youve now switched between all the main views. The main thing to

remember is that when you are viewing a single document that has no

subdocuments, there are only threeview modes available - because you cant

enter Scrivenings (composite text) mode when viewing only a single

document. In this case, the three view mode icons in the toolbar are labelled


29/77

Tutorial

29

View Mode and the left-most icon is a single sheet of text. You click on the

mode you want to view - single document mode, corkboard mode, or outliner

mode.

When you are viewing a folder or a document that has subdocuments,

though, there arefourmodes available - the single document, corkboard and

outliner mode, and also Scrivenings mode. When this is the case, the three

view mode icons in the toolbar are labelled Group Mode and the left-most

icon is a stack of papers. In this mode, you can return to single document

mode by deselectingall of the segments of the Group Mode control - that is,

click on the one that is selected to deselect it - just as you did at the end of Step

6 to view the text of the Part 2 folder.

You can also switch between view modes using the top three items in the

View menu, or using the cmd-1, cmd-2 and cmd-3 keyboard shortcuts.

I know, I know - now you really doneed that cup of tea, and probably

another biscuit too. Once youre done, well take a look at some of these view

modes in more detail.

Before delving further into the view modes, lets pause to check out

another important feature of Scrivener. The chances are that from time to time

you are going to want to split the editor so that you can view two parts of the

same document, or two entirely different documents, alongside one another.

So lets do that now. Go to View > Layout > Split Horizontally. Alternatively,

click on the button in the right of the header view above (the square with the

horizontal line through its middle):


30/77

Tutorial

30

Suddenly, this document is displayed in two panes. Note that through

the Layout menu, you can also choose a vertical split, to get rid of the split

altogether, or to hide the header and footer views for the current document

view. (You can also Opt-click on the header button to create a vertical split, or

to toggle to a vertical split if you already have a horizontal one and vice

versa.)

All well and good, but we dont want to be limited to viewing only one

document at a time, do we? We can do that in any word processor worth its

salt (whatever that means[No need to write in: it refers to the fact that Roman

soldiers used to get paid in salt. (The great thing about these tutorials is that youre

always getting users writing in to point out your mistakes or tell you stuff about Romans.

If you spot any mistakes or have any interesting but relevant factoids, please dont

hesitate to write to [email protected].)]), after all. And naturally, were

not. Click on any document in the binder, and it will be shown in the editor

that currently has the focus. You can tell which editor currently has the focus

because when there is a split, the header bar of the focussed editor turns blue.

You can also drag a document from the binder to the header view of the editor

in which you wish to view it. Lets do that now. Make sure that this document,

Step 8, is visible in the bottom pane, and then drag ThisIsBuzzAldrin

from inside the Research folder onto the header view of the top pane.

ThisIsBuzzAldrin is an audio file, so you wont see much other than a

media control bar in the lower part of the top pane (actually, that audio file is

the beginning of the coolest phone message I ever picked up; sadly, the

message was not for me).


31/77

Tutorial

31

Now you can play the audio file in the top pane whilst typing in this

bottom pane. You can control the media file using the keyboard shortcuts

defined in the View > Media menu. Cmd-Enter will play or pause the file, for

instancewithout you having to click outside of this text. These shortcuts are

very useful for transcription work, or for referring to a video file while

writing. Also note the button in the lower-right of the media control bar:

That is the pause and rewind button. If you click it, it will turn blue,

indicating that it is on. When pause and rewind is turned on, whenever you

pause the media file it will automatically be rewound a couple of seconds

(you can determine exactly how many seconds it gets rewound in the

Navigation pane of the Preferences). This is another useful feature for

transcription work.

But of course, you can use the split view to view any two documents in

Scrivener alongside one another. The snazziness of this feature should

immediately be apparent: you can refer to another text, PDF, image or

QuickTime document in one view while typing in another. You could hide the

toolbar, the header and footer views and the binder and just have the two

documents side-by-side while you work.

Make sure this bottom pane has the focus (click in it if you are not sure)

so that its header view is blue, and click on Step 9 so that it opens here.

The corkboard is one of Scriveners most distinctive structural tools, so

lets look at that now.


32/77

Tutorial

32

BASICUSAGE

The corkboard shows the immediate subdocuments of the selected

document. To see what I mean, click into the top editor to give it the focus (it

should still be showing the ThisIsBuzzAldrin media file; if so, click

somewhere in the control panel - near the volume control slider for instance -

so that the header bar of the top editor turns blue, or blue-grey if you use the

Graphite theme in your system Preferences). Once the top editor has the focus,

click on the Draft folder in the binder, and ensure that the capsule Group

Mode control in the toolbar has the corkboard selected.

Note how the corkboard in the top editor now shows the folders, Part 1

through to Part 5, represented as index cards. If you look in the binder, you

will notice that these five folders are the immediate subdocuments of the Draft

folder - that is, they are only indented one level from the Draft folder. The

corkboard thus allows you to concentrate on different levels of your structure.

Next, in the corkboard itself, double-click on the folder icon in the second

card, which is titled Part 2: Organisation. This will drill down to show the

contents of the Part 2 folder represented as index cards. Each card shows

the title of the document and a synopsis area that can be used to remind you

of the content of the document or to note what you intend to write in the

document later. You can edit the synopsis or title by double-clicking into acard, and you can drag the cards around (and into the binder) to reorder your

documents.

If the inspector is open while the corkboard (or outliner) is open, it will

show information for the currently selected document.

You can change the corkboard settings - the number of cards that get


33/77

Tutorial

33

drawn across, their width and so on - by clicking on the button with the image

of four index cards in it in the right of the footer bar beneath the corkboard:

(Incidentally, if you dont like the corkboard background, you can change

it to a colour of your choice in the Appearance section of the Preferences. You

can also change the way the cards look, to get rid of the rounded corners andmake them look more like real index cards.)

CONTROLLINGTHEOTHEREDITORFROMTHE

CORKBOARD

Note the button containing the two arrows facing in opposite directions

in the corkboard footer bar:

Click on it now. You will notice that it turns blue, to indicate that it is on.

When this button is on, selecting documents in the corkboard (or outliner) will

open them in the other editor if there is a split. Try clicking on the Step 7

card, then on the Step 8 card, and then on the Step 9 card (which should


34/77

Tutorial

34

bring you back here).

See how clicking on the cards opened the documents associated with

them in this editor? Thats a useful trick, as it means you can hide the binder

and use the corkboard or outliner to navigate if you want to, or just use the

corkboard or outliner as secondary navigation tools.

Click on the arrows button again so that the arrows turn back to grey,

then try clicking on the cards in the corkboard once more - this time nothing

will happen, because the button has been deselected.

FREEFORMMODE

Scriveners corkboard is not like a real corkboard in that it is linear and is

really just another way of displaying the subdocuments of a folder or

container. However, you can enter a freeform mode, which allows you to

move cards where you want and experiment. You switch between freeformand regular modes using the capsule control on the right-hand side of the

corkboards footer bar - try clicking on the part of the segment with the three

stacked cards now:

The corkboard background will change and you will be presented with

the cards arranged in no particular order. You can drag cards around, and you

can select multiple cards by clicking and dragging the mouse to create a

marquee rectangle to enclose the cards you wish to select. Dragging the cards

around in freeform mode has no effect on the order of their associated

documents in the binder (unlike in regular mode). If you arrange the cards in


35/77

Tutorial

35

an order you would like to be used in the binder, though, you can click on the

Commit Order button in the footer bar to have Scrivener change the order

of the documents in the binder to best-fit their arrangement on the freeform

corkboard.

Feel free to play around with the cards (but dont commit the order

unless you want to mess up the order of the tutorial!), and once you have

finished, return to regular corkboard mode by selecting the grid segment of

the capsule in the corkboard footer bar.

CORKBOARDSTACKS

You arent limited to displaying the contents of only one container on the

corkboard - you can show the subdocuments of several containers by

stacking the corkboard. This is really easy to do:

1. Click into the corkboard in the top editor to make sure that it has thefocus (remember, the header bar of the top editor should be blue to indicate it

has the focus).

2. Click on the Part 1 folder in the binder.

3. Holding down the Command key, click on Part 2 in the binder.

4. Holding down the Command key again, click on Part 3 in the binder.

5. Repeat with Part 4 and Part 5.

Now scroll down through the corkboard. Note how the subdocuments of

each of the folders you selected are now all displayed on the corkboard, with a

dividing line between each section (and alternate sections have a darker

background colour).

Also take a look at how the regular mode/freeform mode capsule control


36/77

Tutorial

36

in the corkboard footer bar has now been replaced by a capsule control that

allows you to choose how the different sections should be arranged - as a grid,

in rows, or in columns:

Try clicking on each of the different of the different options to see how

they affect the corkboard.

VIEWOPTIONS

Go to View > Corkboard Options > Show Pins. The result will depend on

the look you have chosen for the index cards in the Preferences. If you are

using the default, rounded look, then each card that has a label associated

with it will now have a colour chip in is top-right corner; if you are using a

more traditional index card look, then each index card will now display a pin

holding it in place that is the colour of the label associated with the document.

Alternatively, you can select View > Use Label Color In > Index Cards to tint

the actual cardswith the colour of the label. You can also select Show Stamps

via View > Corkboard Options, which places a diagonal stamp on the cards

this stamp shows the status associated with the document represented by the

index card.

Ctrl-clicking on an index card brings up a contextual menu that allows

you to change the label (and thus the colour of the pin) and status - you can

use the contextual menu to assign a label or status to multiple cards, too, by

selecting all the cards you wish to affect before Control-clicking on one of

them.


37/77

Tutorial

37

There are other viewing options available in the View > Corkboard

Options menu, but we wont cover them here (they are all explained in the

Help file though of course).

One more thing to note, before we move on, is that media files get

displayed on the corkboard as Polaroids. Click in the corkboard above to

ensure it has the focus, and then click on the Research folder to see what I

mean. (You can turn off this behaviour in the Preferences if you would prefer

all files, even images, to be represented as regular index cards.)

Okay, we covered a lot there! Remember that you dont have to use the

features that dont appeal to you, though. Not all writers like corkboards -

some Scrivener users never touch the corkboard at all, preferring the outliner,

which well come to next.

When youre ready then - after a stretch of the legs, a glass of wine, agood curse at the prolixity of this tutorials author, whichever helps - lets

move on to Step 10 and look at the outliner in more depth.

The binder is a very useful organisational tool, but one of the key

concepts behind Scrivener is the linking of synopses to documents and the

binder does not show synopses (well, actually, it does show them in tool tips if

you hover the mouse over items there, but the binder is more intended as a

table of contents). The corkboard, as we have seen, is a good way of viewing

and editing the synopses of multiple documents, but not everyone likes

corkboards and besides, the corkboard only shows one level of a groups

subdocuments at a time. This is where the outliner comes in: it provides a way

of structuring multiple levels of your project at the same time as seeing much

of the data associated with your documents.


38/77

Tutorial

38

Click into the upper pane (which should still show the corkboard) so that

it receives the focus (its header bar will turn blue), and then click on the

Draft folder in the binder. Next, select the Outliner segment of the

Group Mode capsule in the toolbar:

The upper view will now have turned into an outliner, showing all of the

items contained inside the Draft (because that is what we selected in the

binder). Click on a disclosure triangle next to one of the folders to reveal more

documents (or Opt-click on a disclosure triangle) to open all subfolders inside

the folder too.

Next, with the outliner still focussed, click on Part 2: Organisation inthe binder. The outliner will now show only the subdocuments of the Part 2

folder.

You can click on the Hide Synopses button in the outliner footer bar to

get rid of the synopses and show titles only.

Choose which columns appear by clicking on the >> button in the top-

right of the outliner title bar, or via the View > Outliner Columns menu. The

outliner allows you to edit the titles and synopses of various documents,

assign the label or status, set the Include in Compile, Page Break Before

and Compile As-Is flags and reorganise documents by dragging them

around. You can also view various other meta-data, such as the word and

character counts of documents. The Characters and Date custom meta-


39/77

Tutorial

39

data you created in Step 5f are also available in the list of columns, so you can

add those for viewing and editing in the outliner if you wish.

Dragging Tip:By default, when you drag items around you can drop

them on other items as well as between them (dropping on places the

dropped document inside the document it was dropped on, below the other

subdocuments). Holding the Option key down while dragging restricts drops

to between-only this can be useful when you want a little more accuracy.

Some traditional outlining features are available in Scrivener via the

Documents menu (such as Move > Up, Down etc), so be sure to check that

out.

The columns of the outliner can be sorted by clicking on the column

headers. Click once to sort in ascending order (e.g. alphabetical), click again to

sort in descending order, and click again to get rid of the sort:

As with the corkboard, you can select multiple folders in the binder to

view their subdocuments in the outliner - try clicking into the outliner (to give

it the focus) and then selecting Part 1 and Part 2 in the binder, for

instance.

We can get rid of the split now. To do so, click on the button in the right

of the header bar for this editor:


40/77

Tutorial

40

Once youve done that, go to Step 11.

Lets take a closer look at Scrivenings mode. The whole point of

Scrivener is to make working on a long text easier by allowing you to break it

up into smaller pieces, but you will often want to see how those smaller pieces

fit into the greater whole. This is what Scrivenings mode does.

There are two ways of entering Scrivenings mode:

1) You can select a folder or container in the binder that contains text

subdocuments, and use Scrivenings mode to view all of the documents inside

the folder (including the folder itself, if it has text associated with it) as though

they were one long document.

2) You can select arbitrary documents in the binder and view them as

though they were a single document.

We already did (1) in Step 7, so lets try viewing arbitrary documents this

time. Once youve finished reading this paragraph, click on START HERE at

the top of the binder and then, holding down the Command key, click on

Step 7: Changing Editor Views and Step 11: Scrivenings, so that all three

documents get selected. Once thats done, ensure that the stack of papers is

selected in the Group Mode control in the toolbar, and then scroll down

towards the bottom of the text that gets loaded into in this editor and look for

the pink highlighting belowdo that now.


41/77

Tutorial

41

Back here yet?

Do you see what just happened? Scrivenings temporarily combines the

selected documents into a single text. You can select non-contiguous

documents or you can choose to view and edit the contents of a folder or

group. If you were writing a novel, you could therefore write each scene of a

chapter in isolation and then view and edit the whole chapter as though it

were a single document using Scrivenings; or you might run a search on a

particular character and view the results as one long text so that you can see

how the storyline for that character pans out in isolation.

So that you can see where one document ends and the next begins, there

is a horizontal dividing line between sections, but if you prefer you can alsodisplay the document titles above each section by going to the View menu and

selection Editor > Show Titles in Scrivenings.

The Inspector displays information about the chunk of text you are

currently editing.

An important point to note about Scrivenings is that you cannot make

textual edits acrossthe individual document boundaries, so if you select arange of text that spans more than one document block and try to edit it, you

will just hear a beep. (You can change formatting across boundaries though.)

Now its time to click on Step 12...

Weve looked at how to split the editor so that you can view more than

one document at the same time. The main window limits you to two editors,

because of the way they interact with one another (and for space reasons), but


42/77

Tutorial

42

sometimes you may wish to have more than two documents open at the same

time - and this is what QuickReference panels are for.

QuickReference panels are Scriveners internal variation on Mac OS Xs

Quick Look feature. They allow you quickly to open, view and edit the

contents of any document in the project. Lets try opening a couple now.

Well start by opening this document in a QuickReference panel so that

we can keep it open while we open some others. Click on the QuickRef icon

in the toolbar, and then resize the window that appears as you wish, and

scroll to the bottom of its text.

Right, you should now be reading this document inside the

QuickReference panel. Next, go to the Window menu and select Float

QuickReference Panels. This will make it so that QuickReference panels

always stay open and on top of the main window as we open other

documents. Now click on Alhambra in the Research folder of the binder

and then hit the space bar.You should now have a second QuickReference panel open, this one with

an image in it.

Now, go to View > QuickReference > Research > spacewalk_info. Now

you should have a PDF file open in a separate window too.

Note that you can change the label and status associated with the

document using the pop-up buttons in the top corners of the Quick Reference

panel. You can also view the synopsis, notes and other meta-data associated

with the document using the pop-up button in the bottom-right of the

window, which currently says None. Click on that button in this window

and select Notes to see what I mean.

You can therefore use QuickReference panels to refer to other documents

while you write, and they work great with composition mode too.

Lets return to where we were in the binder. Make sure this


43/77

Tutorial

43

QuickReference panel has the focus (click into it if you are not sure) and then

select Reveal in Binder from the View menu. Once youve done that, close

all of the QuickReference panels and move on to Step 13.

At the risk of telling you the blindingly obvious, project search allows

you to search for documents inside your project that contain a particular

word, phrase, label, keyword and suchlike. The way it works will be familiar

to anyone who has used Mail - just click in the search field on the right-hand

side of the toolbar and type the phrase you wish to search for.

TIP: Clicking on the downwards-pointing triangle next to the magnifying

glass in the search field brings up a menu that allows you to modify the

search options. For instance, you can tell Scrivener only to search in the

main text of documents, or only in the labels, and so on. If you hold down

the Option or Command keys while clicking on one of the search

parameters, the selected parameter will be added to any already selected.That is, normally if you have previously chosen Synopsis under Search

In in the search menu and then choose Notes, this will tell Scrivener to

search in document notes instead ofin document synopses. However, if you

hold down Command or Option while clicking on Notes, this will tell

Scrivener to search in document notes as well asdocument synopsis.

Click in the search field now and type collection.

Note how the binder is replaced by a purple-striped Search Results list.

This is a list of documents that contain the word collection somewhere

within them. Also note that the search term - in this case collection - is now

highlighted in red in the current document. So you can click on the documents

in the search results list to and easily see at a glance where the term you

searched for is in the document. For longer documents, just click into them


44/77

Tutorial

44

and go to Edit > Find > Find (or hit cmd-F) to bring up the Find panel,

which will be automatically loaded with the current search term, so that you

can search through the document contents.

To get rid of the search results list, you can click on the close button on

the right of the search field:

Or on the button in the footer bar of the search results:

Simples.

Now onto Step 14: Collections.

Are you still with us? Were most of the way there, I promise.

Were going to look at a feature called Collections next. Collections

provide a way of keeping lists of documents that have nothing to do with

their binder order. The easiest way to understand what I mean is to create a

collection, so lets do that now.

CREATINGANARBITRARYCOLLECTION


45/77

Tutorial

45

Click on the Collections button on the left-hand side of the toolbar. You

will see an extra area appear at the top of the binder with a blue and purple

tab in it, entitled Binder and Search Results. Try clicking on the Search

Results tab.

See what happened? The last search you ran gets run again, and its

results appear where the binder was.

Now click on the Binder tab to return to the binder.

Next, click on the icon in the header view to bring up the header bar

menu, and click on Lock in Place:

The header bar will turn pink. This indicates that the editor is now

locked, which means that clicks in the binder will have no effect. Try

clicking on different documents in the binder to see what I mean - they will no

longer get loaded into the editor when selected as they normally do.

Now hold down the Command key and click on several documents in

the binder to select them. Once you have selected five or six - it doesnt matter

which ones - click on the + button in Collections bar at the very top of the

binder:


46/77

Tutorial

46

The binder will temporarily disappear, to be replaced by a flat list

showing only the documents you selected. You havent moved those

documents, though - they are all still in their rightful places in the binder. No,

youve just created a collection (more specifically, an arbitrary collection) and

when you created it, the selected documents were automatically added to it.

To see what I mean click on one of the documents in the collection list and

select Reveal in Binder from the View menu. This will show you where the

document is located in the binder. Click back on the collection tab once youve

tried this, to return to the collection.

You can rename the collection to anything you want, and you can change

its colour by double-clicking on its colour chip:

Go ahead and try changing the title and colour.

Note that the new collection gets created behind whichever collection is

selected. Because we had the binder open when we created our new

collection, it got added behind the binder tab. You can drag and drop the tab


47/77

Tutorial

47

to be behind the Search Results tab again if you want, though.

Lets add some more documents to the collection. Click back on the

Binder tab and select some different documents. Once youve selected some,

drag and drop them onto your collection tab.

Then click on the tab again to return to the collection - you will see that

the documents you dragged onto the tab are now in the collection too. (Note

that if you hold the mouse over the tab for a moment before you drop, the

collection will be shown automatically.)

TIP: If you hold the Option key down while dragging a folder onto a

collection, then all its subdocuments will get added to the collection too.

You can drag and drop the documents in the collection list to arrange

them into any order you want. If we unlocked this editor, clicking on

documents in the collection would open them in the editor, just as happens

when selecting documents in the binder.

Collections can be used for whatever you like. You might, for instance,

use them to gather together documents you need to do more work on, or you

might use a collection to experiment with the order of documents before

committing to the arrangement. (Once you were happy with the arrangement,

you could select all the documents, ctrl-click on them, and use Move To from


48/77

Tutorial

48

the contextual menu to move them all to the location in the binder you want

them.)

SEARCHCOLLECTIONS

Theres another way of creating collections, too - you can save your

search results as collections. Lets create a collection of all documents with

their status marked To Do:

1) Click on the downwards-pointing arrow next to the magnifying glass

in the search field in the toolbar, and select Status.

2) Click in the search field and type To Do. The binder will be replaced

by the regular purple search results list (with its associated Search Results

tab selected in the Collections pane above). You will see that the status for

each is marked To Do, as you would expect.

3) Click on the downwards-pointing arrow next to the magnifying glass

in the search field again, and this time select Save Search from the bottomof the menu.

4) Enter a name for the search, e.g. To Do (it will use the search phrase

by default) and hit OK.

The search results will now change colour and you will see that a new tab

has appeared in the list of collections named To Do. Again, you can renamethis or change the colour to one of your choosing. The magnifying glass icon

on the left of the tab indicates that this is a search collection. These are

different to regular, arbitrary collections in that you cant arbitrarily add

documents to them or move them around. Instead, every time you click on a

search collection, the search gets run again. To see what I mean:

1) Click back on the Binder tab.


49/77

Tutorial

49

2) Click on the START HERE document at the top of the binder and hit

the space bar to bring up a QuickReference panel.

3) Click on the pop-up button in the top-right of the QuickReference

panel and choose To Do from the list of options to change the status.

4) Repeat this with a couple of other documents if you like.

5) Now click on the To Do collection again.

Note how the START HERE document is now part of the To Do

collection, because we set up the To Do collection to include any documents

that have To Do set as their status.

Search collections can be used in various ways. You could use one to

keep track of the storyline of a character in a novel, to highlight documents

that contain a word you know you over use, and so on.

The Search Results tab is itself really just a special type of search

collection - it will always show the results of the most recent search - even

after you close and reopen the project.

To delete a collection, just select its tab and then click on the - button in

the Collections bar. Deleting a collection has no effect on its constituent

documents - they are not deleted and remain in their place in the binder.

Theres lots you can do with collections - or you dont have to use them

at all. Like most things in Scrivener, they are available if you need them but

can be ignored if you dont.

Lets unlock the editor now. Click on the icon in the header view again

and this time deselect Lock in Place. You can also click on the Collections

icon in the toolbar to hide the collections pane if you want.


50/77

Tutorial

50

Now its on to Part 3. Expand the Part 3 folder if it is collapsed, and

then click straight on Step 15: Importing.


51/77

Tutorial

51

If you decide Scrivener is the program for you, the first thing you are

going to want to do is import your existing work. This is simple. Just go to

File > Import > Files, select the files you wish to import, and click the

Import button. All files and folders that are supported by Scrivener will be

imported, including subdirectories, maintaining the file structure from the

Finder in the binder. (Note that if you have selected a document that is

contained inside the Draft folder in the binder, when you go to File >

Import > Files you will only have the option of importing text file types; this

is because files are imported at the location of the selection in the binder and

the Draft folder only supports text files. Thus, if you wish to import media

files, make sure that the selection is not in the Draft folder.) You can also

drag files directly from the Finder into Scrivener s binder.

The following file types are supported by Scriveners import feature:

!

RTFD! RTF

! DOC

! DOCX (Leopard and above only)

! ODT (Leopard and above only)

! TXT / plain text

! PDF

! Final Draft FDX

! Final Draft FCF

! HTML

! HTM

! WEBARCHIVE

! Most image files

! Any file supported by Quicktime (video and audio)


52/77

Tutorial

52

(Note that the one main file format we are unable to support is the Apple

Pages format. This is because Apple does not make the .pages format publicly

available, and so it is not possible for developers or companies outside of

Apple to read and write files in the .pages format. To import Pages files, you

should therefore use the Share feature of Pages to create copies of your

documents in one of Scriveners supported formats - Pages can create

documents in RTF, RTFD, DOC and DOCX formats.)

It is important to note that some attributes may be lost for certain

document types upon import. For instance, while Scrivener can export

footnotes, comments, annotations and images to RTF and Microsoft Word .doc

formats, when importingMicrosoft Word .doc and .docx documents, these

attributes get lost. This is a limitation of the standard Cocoa OS X text

importers. However, Scrivener can import footnotes, comments and images

from RTF files, so if you want to import Microsoft Word files that containthese features, first use Word to save them as RTF and import the RTF files

rather than the .doc files. (If your Word documents dont contain footnotes or

imagesor if you dont mind losing themyou dont need to worry about

this.)

You can also import web archives directly from the internet by selecting

Import > Web Page From the File menu.

You can actually import any file at all - it doesnt have to be one of the

supported formats listed above. If you import an unsupported file type, it will

appear in the editor as an icon. Double-clicking on the icon will open the file

in the program associated with it on your machine.


53/77

Tutorial

53

On to Step 16...

What if you want to use Scrivener but are worried about being locked in?

The Scrivener project file format (.scriv) is unique, so what happens if you

want to move your work elsewhere? Fear not: you are not locked in at all.

Simply select all of the files you want to export in the binder (everything if

you so wish) and then go to File > Export > Files Enter the name of the

directory that will be created to hold all of the files, choose your preferred text

file format and whether you want to include notes and meta-data in the

export (which will include the synopses), then hit Export. All the selected

files will be exported with the binder structure intact; that is, the virtual

folders in the binder will become actual folders in the Finder. (Wait, the

folders in the Finder are virtual, too I need to get out more.)

Thats how you can get anythingout of Scrivener. Generally, however, the

files you have inside a Scrivener project are there to support your writing - thetext you have been slaving over - writing, editing, cutting up, rearranging - in

the Draft folder. The whole point of Scrivener is to produce that text, so at

some point you are going to want to export or print it as a single document or

manuscript.

To find out how, go to Step 17.

Scriveners purpose is to provide a sort of writers studio; a place where

you throw everything, all of your research, ideas and scribblings, with the aim

of mashing it together into a draft which you can then either print for posting

off to a publisher, or export, whether to another program for tweaking or to an

e-book format for self-publishing. This is where Scriveners Compile feature

comes in.


54/77

Tutorial

54

The Compile feature takes everything that is in the Draft folder and

generates a single, formatted document from it. You have complete control

over the output - you can choose from various file formats (or print directly

from Scrivener), you can choose whether to include document titles (or

synopses and notes for that matter), set up headers and footers, and even

completely change the font and paragraph formatting if you so desireso

theres no need to write in the same font you use for printing and exporting

unless you want to.

Compile can be found at the bottom of the File menu. Try selecting it

now, but then click Cancel and come back here.

At first glance, it probably doesnt look like much. This is because it is set

up by default to show only the most basic options - you can choose a preset

from the Format As pop-up button and a file format from the Compile

For button, modify a few basic optoins, change the font if you so wish, andthen click on Compile to create a basic document containing the merged

contents of your Draft folder.

Lets try that now - well generate a PDF preview of the draft of this

tutorial project:

1) Go to File > Compile

2) Ensure that Original is chosen next to Format As (this is the

default setting, and exports all of the text in your draft as it appears in

Scrivener).

3) Ensure Print is selected next to Compile For.

4) Click on Compile.

5) The print preview pane will appear. You could click on Print to print


55/77

Tutorial

55

your manuscript, but we want to see it as a PDF. So instead, click on the

PDF button in the bottom-left of the panel and select Open PDF in

Preview (note that you can choose Save as PDF to save a PDF document

to disk, which does exactly the same as choosing PDF from the Compile

For menu).

Preview will open to show you the entire contents of the Draft folder

combined into one long document It seems I wrote a lot.

You can choose from one of the other Format As presets to format your

draft differently. For instance, try compiling again, just as you did above, but

this time choose Novel format (be sure you choose Print from the

Compile For list again, as changing the Format As option can affect the

selected file format). This time, you will find that the draft has been compiled

using a Courier 12-point font with double line-spacing.

The other most important options in this area are Add front matter and

Font. Add front matter allows you to choose a document, or a folder of

documents, in the binder that should be used to provide front matter for your

manuscript (title page, contents page, dedication and so on). You could just

insert the title page and other front matter at the top of the Draft folder and

not worry about this option. The benefit of using this setting, though, is that it

makes it easy to switch between different sets of front matter for different

formats: while your body text will always stay the same, you may want

different front matter depending on whether you are submitting to an editor

using standard manuscript format, self-publishing, or creating an e-book.

The font setting allows you to change the font for everything in the

manuscript to a particular font face. This is just a quick and easy way of

changing the font - much more control is available, as well see (this setting


56/77

Tutorial

56

the same as Quick Font Override - see the yellow tip box below for more

information).

Thats all you need to know for creating basic print-outs and exported

files from your draft. You may have noticed, though, that the options we have

currently been looking at are all inside the Summary tab of the Compile

panel. Its called the Summary tab because it just shows a few of the most

commonly-used options, and allows you to make quick changes to existing

formats. At some point, however, you may find that you want more control

over the document being producedat which time youll want to play with

the full range of options available. Lets look at them now. Try going back to

the Compile sheet and clicking on All Options:

The Compile sheet will expand to show a whole raft of options. You


57/77

Tutorial

57

dont really need to worry too much about all of these settings at the moment

- the main thing to know is just that this is where you come to export or print

your entire manuscript, and that the Compile settings provide complete

control over how your manuscript will be formatted should you need it.

Lets try a quick custom compile though. (You may wish to open this

document in a QuickReference window, by clicking on the QuickRef panel

in the toolbar, so that you can refer to it easily while the Compile sheet is

open.) This time, with the compile sheet expanded to show all of the

advanced options, try the following:

1) Choose Original from the Format As list again, to reset the

formatting.

2) Take a look at the Contents

Tutorial scrivener

Documents

Transcript of Tutorial scrivener