Tip of the Day: Preference settings only affect text formatting for new documents. For existing documents, use Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style.
Tip of the Day: To alter line height, inter-line spacing and paragraph spacing of selected text go to Text > Spacing…
Tip of the Day: Make sure files have extensions before importing them into Scrivener, e.g. RTF. Scrivener uses the extension to determine the file type.
Tip of the Day: When the editor is split either horizontally or vertically, the pane that is active displays an underline in the document title of the relevant header bar.
Tip of the Day: To print your entire draft, go to File > Compile Draft… and click on the “Print…” button instead of “Export…”.
Tip of the Day: Edit > Find > Find Annotation… allows you to cycle through all annotations in a project.
Tip of the Day: The little arrow next to the magnifying glass in the toolbar search field allows you to change the search parameters.
Tip of the Day: You can set up full screen mode to look like an old-fashioned computer by playing with Scrivener > Preferences… > Full Screen. ‘Setting Up Your Writing Environment’ tutorial video available here literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: Project Targets allow you to set a word/character count target for the entire draft, and for each writing session. The ‘Targets’ video gives more information literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: If you would like to change the organisation of your Scrivener toolbar, go to View > Customize Toolbar…
Tip of the Day: To see where a project is saved, ctrl-click on the .scriv icon next to the project name at the very top of the window, above the toolbar line.
Tip of the Day: New documents use the current mode. If in script mode, new documents will use script mode. Text > Scriptwriting > Script Mode or cmd-3 will switch between script and prose writing modes.
Tip of the Day: Folders and text files are much the same. To see the text of a folder, click on the corkboard icon. Please see ‘The Flexibility of Folders in Scrivener’ tutorial video literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html for more details.
Tip of the Day: Command-r (cmd-r) will quickly show or hide the ruler.
Tip of the Day: You can customise the separators that appear between texts in Edit Scrivenings via Preferences… > General.
Tip of the Day: You can get rid of the lines from index cards using Scrivener > Preferences… > Fonts & Colors > Draw lines.
Tip of the Day: Entering <$p> in the header/footer field in File > Compile Draft… > Text Options will insert the page number in the compiled file.
Tip of the Day: You can insert images directly into the text by dragging or by using Edit > Insert > Image From File… Double-click on the image to resize.
Tip of the Day: To enter line breaks into synopses when editing in corkboard or outliner mode, use opt-return instead of just return.
Tip of the Day: Edit Scrivenings allows you to work on multiple text documents as though they were one, even inside the Research folder.
Tip of the Day: If you prefer the Outliner to the Corkboard, go to Scrivener > Preferences… > Navigation tab to choose which mode gets opened by default.
Tip of the Day: To check for overused words, select the documents you want to check, enter Edit Scrivenings mode, and go to View > Statistics > Text Statistics. Click on the disclosure triangle next to “Word Frequency” to reveal the word frequency.
The Question:
Can you do this for an entire project at once, or do you have to go document by document? I have a 220,000 word book with sixty chapters.
As the tip says, you can use Edit Scrivenings to view as many documents together as you want. So just load up all your text in Edit Scrivenings before using the tool.
Make sure you have the editor focussed, not the Binder. It sounds like you created an Edit Scrivenings session, but the Binder is still active. Click anywhere in the text editor and try again.
The editor is covered in the “Getting Started > The Main Interface” section of the user manual. Briefly, it is the big part in the middle (if the Inspector is open; otherwise it is the big part on the right) that holds the text of your documents. It is where you type in words and edit what has already been written, hence, text editor. Make sure the blinking cursor is in the editor.
Okay, that’s what I thought, but it didn’t work, which is why I started searching on the term.
HOWEVER–I must have opened it, but not clicked in it. I would have sworn to you that I clicked in several files and never got the option for test stats–but this time when I did it, it worked. So clearly I was opening the various docs but not clicking IN them.
Once again, I thank you for your patience, both of you!
No problem, glad it’s working. The trick is that blinking cursor. If you don’t see it, for some reason you aren’t actually “in” the editor. A common mistake is clicking in the left or right margin padded area rather than directly on the text itself. The padding area is not technically in the editor, so your focus stays in the Binder.
Tip of the Day: To give highlight colours meaningful names (e.g. event related), use the panel from Edit > Find > Find Highlight… or press ctrl-cmd-H.
Tip of the Day: To get a word count for selected text, ctrl-click on the selection; the count appears at the bottom of the contextual menu. Plenty of count related information in our video on ‘Statistics’ literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: To assign a label or status to multiple documents, ctrl-click on the selected documents in the binder, corkboard or outliner.
Tip of the Day: Set up your own list of labels and status descriptions by going to File > Label & Status Setup… or by pressing alt-cmd-,
Tip of the Day: You can hide or show the header and footer bars in the editor pane(s) using View > Layout > Hide/Show Header/Footer View.
Tip of the Day: Hit cmd-. or opt-esc while typing to bring up the auto-complete list. Add auto-complete words to a Scrivener project via the Edit > Edit Auto-Complete List… menu item.
Tip of the Day: The two arrows (if activated - the icon goes blue when clicked) in the footer bar beneath the outliner and corkboard (when you are in the relevant mode) make the other editor (when opened) show the selected document. It is simple when you try!
Tip of the Day: Use the References pane in the Inspector (or press cmd-7) to create links to external files that you do not want to import into the project. You can see our ‘References & Links’ video for more information literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: You can give the corkboard a custom background image or a plain colour background via Scrivener > Preferences… > Fonts & Colors tab > Corkboard background:
Tip of the Day: You can add additional columns in the Outliner view by clicking the 3 dots (…) at the right of the existing columns. The likes of ‘Word Count’ and ‘Target’ information are then only a further click away.
Tip of the Day: To exit a search, either click on the ‘X’ at the right of search term field, or the ‘X’ in the footer bar of the binder.
Tip of the Day: The Formatting tab in File > Compile Draft… lets you choose how the text of your exported manuscript should appear. It doesn’t have to look anything like it does in Scrivener’s editor, if you do not want it to.
Tip of the Day: To make individual documents retain their format when using File > Compile Draft… (e.g. title pages), check Preserve Formatting in the Inspector.
Tip of the Day: Create custom project templates by setting up a bare bones project with settings you want and using File > Save As Template…
Tip of the Day: Switch between project and document notes by clicking on the Notes tab in the Inspector, then clicking on Document Notes. Project Notes can be viewed by any document.
Tip of the Day: Going to View > Customize Toolbar… provides a way for you to drag your favourite items to (or default reset) the toolbar.
Tip of the Day: Do not worry about the size of a Scrivener project in terms of disk space, or how many files you can put into it.
Tip of the Day: The default save location for Scrivener projects is your Documents folder. Cmd-click on the title bar (top of window) to see a file’s location.
Tip of the Day: Setting up Compile Draft correctly will allow you to print out a list of all the titles in your draft, including any synopsis or notes you may wish to include. literatureandlatte.com/wiki/ … d_draft.3F
Tip of the Day: Do not be concerned with proprietary formats. You should always (for the foreseeable future) be able to get your writing out of Scrivener using an RTF or HTML export.
Tip of the Day: A list of readily available Scrivener keyboard shortcuts, with a link to creating your own custom shortcuts literatureandlatte.com/wiki/ … _Shortcuts
Tip of the Day: Edit Scrivenings allows you to edit multiple text documents as though they were one long document. This way, you can write in small chunks and then combine them in any way you like to see how they work together.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener allows you to create templates from your projects and to share them with others if you wish. ~/Library/Application Support/Scrivener/ProjectTemplates
Tip of the Day: Every document in Scrivener can have an associated synopsis. In the Inspector,
as in the Corkboard view, the synopsis is displayed as the text of an index card (which is
already a familiar way of storing synopses for many writers).
Tip of the Day: Full Screen mode allows you to edit your text in a distraction-free environment. You can view any text document or Edit Scrivenings session.
Tip of the Day: Edit > Edit Auto-Complete List… brings up a panel which allows you to add words to the auto-complete list for the current project. Great for character names, locations, or often recurring technical terms. Hit cmd-period or opt-escape when one or more characters of a word in the list have been typed to call on the feature.
Tip of the Day: You can double-click on the icon in the top-left of index cards in Corkboard mode and in the ‘Type’ column of Outliner rows to navigate into the relevant document.
Tip of the Day: Use Text > Scrivener Link to create hyperlinks within text documents or notes that point to other documents within the project.
Tip of the Day: Activating Text > Scriptwriting > Script Mode - Screenplay will turn Scrivener’s editor with focus into a place where you could possibly write the treatment or complete script for next year’s big stage or screen hit!
Tip of the Day: You can easily save a search by clicking ‘Save Search…’ at the bottom of the search menu. This will add the search criteria as a purple folder with a magnifying glass at the bottom of your Binder. Simply double-click the folder to run the search again. You can have as many saved searches as you wish.
Tip of the Day: Holding down the Option key whilst dragging in Outliner mode will disallow “Drop Ons”, making it easier to target between documents. This is very useful if you are rearranging a set of documents at the same level and want to avoid dropping them into one another.
Tip of the Day: The text editor in Scrivener uses the standard OS X ruler, which can be shown or hidden via Text > Ruler > Show Ruler or by hitting cmd-R.
Tip of the Day: To define your own styles, choose Styles > Other (in the ruler; cmd-R) to open the style editor. Navigate back and forth through the styles of your document or styles already saved. Click Select to select all ranges of text in the document that have the displayed style; click Apply to apply the style to selected text. To add a style from your document to the favourites, click Add To Favorites.
Tip of the Day: Drag and drop a document icon from the Binder, Outliner or Corkboard to create a Scrivener link to that document in the text (so that clicking the link will open the document). If the document is an image document, however, the image itself will get placed inside the text; to create a Scrivener link from a dragged image document, hold down the Option key whilst dragging and dropping it into the text.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener > Preferences… > General > Default Editor Width; the value you enter here will determine the width of the main editor pane after a zoom. Scrivener has a “smart zoom” feature whereby, when you click on “zoom” (either in the Window menu or by clicking on the green traffic light button in the top-left of the window), Scrivener will try to size the window to best fit the current visible elements.
Tip of the Day: Double-clicking on an image in the Editor will display the Image Tools HUD. You can then use the tools to rescale or rotate your image.
Tip of the Day: If typographer’s quotes are turned on (Scrivener > Preferences… > Typography), all speech marks and apostrophes get transformed into curly quotes instead of straight ones. You can toggle between curly and straight quotes by selecting a speech mark or apostrophe character and re-typing the speech mark or apostrophe.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener > Preferences… > General allows you to set a bibliography or citations manager such as Bookends, EndNote or Sente for academic work. Click on ‘Choose…’ to select your citations manager (usually from the Applications folder). If you set a citations manager here, you can hit shift-cmd-Y (or select Text > Bibliography/Citations…) to launch your bibliography application and bring it to the front automatically. You can then use your bibliography/citations application to paste a citation into Scrivener.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener automatically saves changes made to projects. If the user makes no edits for two seconds, Scrivener deems it a good time to auto-save without the process interrupting the user. Scrivener > Preferences… > General allows you can change the period Scrivener waits to auto-save.
Tip of the Day: By default, the “paper” colour in Full Screen mode is a pinkish-grey (to be easy on the eyes), and the text colour will be whatever you are using for the main document. You can change this via the Scrivener > Preferences… > Full Screen, so that you could even have a retro green text on black if you wanted!
Tip of the Day: If ‘Automatically show completions’ is checked in Scrivener > Preferences… > Text Editing, when in Scriptwriting mode, any auto-completions you have set in the ‘Script Settings…’ panel will pop-up automatically when you pause from typing.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener’s RTF importer supports footnotes, annotations and most images. To get Word documents with such features into Scrivener, first save them as RTF in Word and then import them into Scrivener in RTF format rather than DOC format.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener 2.0 will offer a plethora of choice when printing index cards or your project outline, but to currently print a synopsis of your work, use File > Compile Draft… and choose to include titles and synopses only.
Tip of the Day: File > Compile Draft… > Text Options > Convert italics to underlines is useful if you use italics for emphasis but want to export or print using the standard manuscript format in which emphasis is indicated by underlined text.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener > Preferences… > Fonts & Colors lets you customise the Corkboard background. Select “Corkboard pattern” to use the default Corkboard background; “Custom color” allows you to choose a background colour from the colour panel on the right of the pop-up button; “Custom background…” lets you select an image file from disk to use as the background image.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener comes with a number of templates via the Extras Installer, and you can easily create you own with File > Save As Template…
Tip of the Day: If ‘Use block insertion point’ is checked within Scrivener > Preferences… > Full Screen, the insertion point in the text will appear as an old-fashioned block - the sort popular circa 1980 (or in Terminal).
Tip of the Day: Not much of a tip if you’re already using Scrivener, but the application trial runs for 30 days of actual use. If you use it every day it lasts 30 days; if you use it only two days a week, it lasts fifteen weeks. Once the trial expires, you can export all of your work or buy a licence to continue using Scrivener.
Tip of the Day: Additional meta-data columns can be added to your Outliner view by pressing ‘…’ Sorting options galore are coming with Scrivener 2.0!
Tip of the Day: Users who prefer plain text may wish to set their default font and paragraph settings in Scrivener > Preferences… > Text Editing to something that emulates a plain text “feel”. For instance, you could set the font to Monaco 10-point (Monaco does not draw bold or
italics) and set the paragraph formatting so that there are no indents and no inter-line spacing.
Tip of the Day: View > Editor > Lock in Place locks the editor so that selections made in the binder will not change what is being viewed in the editor. When activated, the header view changes colour to indicate that the editor is currently locked in place.
Tip of the Day: You can check that you are running the latest version of Scrivener by going to Scrivener > Check for Updates… The current version is 1.54.
Tip of the Day: When you delete a file in Scrivener (by hitting the “Delete” key or by clicking on the “Delete” toolbar item), it is not irretrievably deleted. Instead, it is sent to the Trash folder in the binder, and there it will stay until the trash is emptied.
Tip of the Day: If you don’t like the alternating grey colour employed by Edit Scrivenings, you can change it via Scrivener > Preferences… > Fonts & Colors > Alternate scrivenings.
Tip of the Day: Use ‘Preserve Formatting’ in the Inspector to preserve the way a document looks in Scrivener’s editor when using File > Compile Draft… This is useful for chunks of text that require special formatting, such as letters or title pages.
Tip of the Day: When a search is performed (using either Edit > Find > Project Search… or the toolbar search), the binder is replaced with the search results table.
Tip of the Day: We have tutorial videos available in HD on YouTube youtube.com/. Search for ‘Scrivener Basics’. More videos will be uploaded soon-ish, revealing some Scrivener 2.0 features.
Tip of the Day: File > Import > Web Page… (or Add Web Page directly from the toolbar) lets you enter the URL of a web page that you would like to import into Scrivener. The web page will be imported as a web archive into the Research area of a Scrivener project. You can convert it to a text file afterwards by using Documents > Convert > Web Archive to Text should you wish to edit the file in your Draft area).
Tip of the Day: Use the “Templates…” pop-up button at the bottom of the assistant window from File > New Project… to import templates created by other users, and to export your own templates for sharing. Selecting “Select Current by Default” from the pop-up menu will cause the currently selected template to be selected every time that you go to create a new project.
Tip of the Day: Edit > Paste and Match Style (or shift-option-cmd-V) pastes the contents of the clipboard without any of its existing fonts and styles. Useful for when you have copied a range of formatted text but want to paste it using the style of the text into which you are placing it.
Tip of the Day: Documents > Merge will combine multiple selected documents in the binder, outliner or corkboard into one document. Text, synopses and notes are all combined into a merged text, synopsis and notes text respectively. The title, and meta-data such as label and status, are taken from the first selected document.
