Simplenote Synchronization

The Simplenote Sync wizard allows you to easily sync documents in your Scrivener project with Simplenote, so that you can work on or create documents while on the go using an iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch or the Simplenote web application.

To use this feature, you will need to create a Simplenote account by downloading the Simplenote app to your iPad, iPod or iPhone. You can learn more here:

http://simplenoteapp.com

How It Works

Simplenote is a general purpose note-taking system and knows nothing of Scrivener or Scrivener projects. When uploading documents to Simplenote, Scrivener therefore places some information on the first line so that it is able to find and recognise these documents again later, when you want to sync them. The information Scrivener places on the first line is formatted like this:

MyDocumentName (MyProjectKeyword [ID])
--

"MyDocumentName" represents the document title as it appears in the binder, "MyProjectKeyword" is the keyword you assign to the project in this wizard (see below), and "ID" is an internal numerical ID that Scrivener assigns to all documents, which users don't normally see. In practice, it might look like this:

The Grand Finale (MyGreatNovel [756])
--

These three pieces of information in combination allow Scrivener to sync documents with Simplenote. You should therefore not edit this line in Simplenote. In particular, if you edit the project keyword or numerical ID, Scrivener may not recognise the Simplenote text as belonging to the current project, or worse, it may try to sync it with the wrong document in Scrivener. It is thus generally recommended that you leave this line alone. However, you can edit only the document title (the part before the parentheses), which will update the title in Scrivener when synced, if you really want to.

Getting Started

Login details: The Simplenote Sync wizard will first prompt you to enter your login details. Enter the e-mail address and password which you used to register for Simplenote. You can check "Remember in keychain" to have your login details remembered for the future.

Project keyword: Along with your Simplenote login details, you must also enter a project keyword if you have not already chosen one. This is used by Scrivener to identify documents in Simplenote that are associated with the current project. You should choose a keyword that is meaningful to the project, easy to remember, and that is unlikely to occur on the first line of documents in general. For instance, you might use a wordsJammedTogether version of your project title, such as "MyGreatNovel".

NOTE: It is important to understand that Scrivener has no way of knowing which documents in Simplenote are associated with which Scrivener project without this keyword, so it is up to the user to choose a unique keyword for each project. If two projects have the same keyword, you could run into problems, with each trying to sync the other's documents in Simplenote.

The project keyword is also very useful for viewing notes in Simplenote, because you can use it as a search term to filter Simplenote so that only documents from your project are shown in its file list.

Once you have entered your login details and ensured that a project keyword has been supplied, click on "Continue". You won't be prompted for the project keyword or login details next time you sync the project with Simplenote, but if you need to changing anything you can return to this pane by clicking on the "Change Settings" button in Step 1. Note that the project keyword is shown in the top right of the wizard in steps 1 and 2.

Step 1: Synchronizing Existing Documents

You will next be asked to choose which documents in the project you wish to sync with Simplenote. You can choose to sync all documents in the current project or to specify individual documents. It is generally recommended that you don't sync all documents in a project, because this can clutter up Simplenote and severely slow down synchronizations. Because Simplenote notes are stored on the cloud (that is, online), Scrivener has to download them into memory every time you sync, so the more notes you have in Simplenote, the longer the sync process will take.

If you choose to identify the documents you wish to sync (as recommended), you are presented with separate lists for documents contained in the Draft folder and all other text documents in the project (Simplenote is text-only so you can only choose text documents). You should go through and tick the documents you wish to upload to Simplenote for editing while on the go.

All documents that have already been uploaded and exist in Simplenote will be ticked for syncing automatically. The icons next to the document titles will tell you what will happen when you choose to sync, as follows:

Icon Meaning
The document is up to date both in the project and on the Simplenote servers - the version in the project is the same as the version in Simplenote.
The document will be uploaded. This indicates either that the version of the document in the Scrivener project is newer than the one in Simplenote or that it has not yet been uploaded at all and is now selected for syncing.
The document will be downloaded. This indicates that there is a newer version of the document in Simplenote which will be downloaded in order to update the version in the project.
The document needs updating in Simplenote. This green asterisk appears if you choose (by deselecting) not to sync a document that exists on the Simplenote servers but which has been edited in Scrivener since the last sync. If you select to sync the document, the asterisk will turn into a green "up" arrow to indicate that it will be uploaded.
The document needs updating in Scrivener. This red asterisk appears if you choose (by deselecting) not to sync a document that has a newer version available on the Simplenote servers. If you select to sync the document, the asterisk will turn into a red "down" arrow to indicate that it will be downloaded.
No icon The document is not selected for syncing and does not exist on the Simplenote servers.

Options

  • If "Take snapshots of affected documents before updating" is ticked, Scrivener will take a snapshot of documents being updated before overwriting them with the new version of the text. This ensures that you can return to the earlier version if something goes wrong with the sync process. It is therefore highly recommended that you keep this ticked, as it provides a good degree of protection against losing work in cases where you have inadvertently made changes to the documents both in Scrivener and in Simplenote between syncs.
  • If "Delete from Simplenote any project documents not selected for syncing" is ticked, Scrivener will delete from Simplenote any files that were previously uploaded from this project that are no longer ticked for syncing. This is recommended in order to avoid clutter and slowing down Simplenote.

Once you are happy with the documents selected for sync, click "Continue".

Step 2: Importing Documents From Simplenote

The final part of the wizard allows you to choose to import documents that exist in Simplenote but which do not yet have corresponding files in the project. Given that Simplenote is a general purpose note-taking system, there may be many notes in your Simplenote account that you do not wish to import, including notes belonging to other Scrivener projects. This pane of the wizard therefore contains two lists.

The first list contains documents that seem to have been marked as belonging to this project. These are documents that contain the project keyword (see above) on the first line of the note enclosed in brackets, and which were not detected as already belonging to the project. This makes it very easy to create a document in Simplenote and mark it for importing into a particular Scrivener project: just write the document title followed by the project keyword in brackets on the first line of the note, e.g:

MyNewNote (MyProjectKeyword)
--

(The two hyphens on the second line are optional.)

Note that there is no numerical ID in square brackets in this case because that is something only Scrivener can assign (and when you sync these documents, Scrivener will indeed add a numerical ID). The documents in this first list are usually all ticked by default. The exception is documents that Scrivener thinks might have been deleted from the project but are still on the server - such documents appear in this list but are coloured red and are not ticked. These are documents that contain the project keyword on the first line and a document ID in square brackets, but for which the ID does match any existing documents in the project. If you see notes coloured red in this list, the most likely explanation is that you synced them in the past but have since deleted them from the project. If you leave them unticked and have "Delete from Simplenote notes marked for this project but not selected for syncing" checked, then these notes will be removed from the Simplenote servers too.

The second list contains all other Simplenote documents, and these are not ticked by default.

Options

  • At the top of the "Import" pane you can choose the folder in the project into which imported documents should be placed (the Research folder is used by default). "Only show containers in destination list" limits the documents shown in the list to folders and containers; if unchecked, you can choose to import documents as the subdocuments of any file in the project. (If you are unsure, just leave it ticked.)
  • "Remove blank lines between paragraphs in imported notes" allows you to choose whether or not empty lines should be removed in imported documents: because Simplenote is plain text, it is common to separate paragraphs using empty lines, but in Scrivener paragraphs are less likely to need blank lines between them. (Note that when uploading documents to Simplenote, Scrivener automatically places blank line padding between paragraphs to make them easier to read in Simplenote.)
  • If "Delete from Simplenote notes marked for this project but not selected for syncing" is checked, then any notes that appear in the "Notes marked for this project" list that are not ticked for syncing will be removed from the Simplenote servers. (Given that this could result in the deletion of the only copies of such notes, you will be asked to confirm this deletion during sync.)

Once you are happy with the documents you have selected for synchronization and import, click on "Sync". You can choose "Go Back" at any point to make changes.

Limitations

1. Formatting

Note that Simplenote, like most mobile note-taking solutions, can only store plain text, so all formatting - bold, italics, line spacing and so forth - will be stripped in the versions of documents stored in Simplenote. Thus, when updating documents in a project with corresponding versions that have been edited in Simplenote, the following formatting limitations apply.

  • Scrivener maintains the formatting of paragraphs within a note that have not been changed.
  • Any paragraphs that have been edited in Simplenote will lose their formatting in Scrivener.
  • Images will be stripped from documents that have been edited in Simplenote.

2. Number of Notes

At the time of writing, Simplenote is limited to syncing 2,000 notes a day. Although this sounds a lot, if you end up syncing the entire contents of ten projects that contain 200 text documents, you can soon end up with a lot of notes in your Simplenote account. It is therefore strongly recommended that you only sync the documents you need for working on while away from Scrivener, and that you ensure the option is ticked to trim documents that are not being synced. This will also help ensure that syncing remains as fast as possible.

Note that Literature & Latte are in no way affiliated with the creators of Simplenote and take no responsibility for any text lost through synchronization. As with all synchronization processes, you should ensure you back up regularly and double-check that the right documents are being synchronized.