Create Custom Scrivener Compile Formats

Scrivener’s compile feature stitches together the writing in your project and exports a file in one of many formats. At the most basic level, you can compile your manuscript with a few clicks and create a file to send to friends, beta readers, agents, or editors.

But the compile feature offers a great deal of customization. While Scrivener templates feature basic compile settings, called formats, you can modify existing compile formats or create your own, tweaking just about every option in the compile process.

In this article, we look at the basics of creating custom Scrivener compile formats.

What are compile formats?

Compile formats are groups of settings that apply when you compile your project. These settings have no effect while you’re working on your project, writing, or viewing it in Scrivener. They only affect the compile process.

In How to Compile Your Scrivener Project for Print, PDF, or Microsoft Word, we discuss the basics of compiling a Scrivener project. The Format sidebar of the Compile dialogue contains a number of preset formats. Different project templates provide different options, and the default formats are designed for most use cases.

But custom formats let you tweak every aspect of the final document layout when you compile.

Creating a new compile format

To create a new compile format, display the Compile dialogue by choosing File > Compile. You see the Compile Overview screen:

Click the + icon below the Format sidebar. You see two options: New Format and Duplicate & Edit Format. If you choose New Format, you start from scratch, with no settings. This means you have to do a lot of work to set up your compile format. It’s easier to duplicate and edit an existing format. For the purposes of this article, we’ll use the Manuscript (Times) format, which uses standard publishing conventions with 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced.

You have two options to save your compile format in the Save To menu:

• Project Formats, which you create and save within a project.
• My Formats, which you create and save so they are available to every project on your computer.

Save your compile format, and Scrivener takes you back to the Compile screen. Now that it’s saved, right-click it in the Formats sidebar and choose Edit Format, or double-click it to see the Format Editor screen again.

Customizing a compile format

There are a number of categories in the sidebar of the Compile Format editor, and at the top of that sidebar, you see a pop-up menu allowing you to choose file types. In this example, PDF is selected.

If you click …, a popover lets you choose which file types the compile format is available for. When you change file types, the categories in the sidebar may change, since not all categories apply to all file types.

While the compile format you’re editing can apply to all file types, choosing the one you want to use from the top menu may limit the number of available categories, so it’s a good idea to select it.

Compile format categories

You customize compile formats in the various categories that display in the sidebar. Here’s what the various compile format categories cover. We won’t go into detail here, and you should check chapter 24 of the Scrivener manual, which lists every option available. Not all of these categories are available for each file format, and we’re not including Markdown-specific categories, of which there are several.

• Section Layouts: This section lets you assign section layouts to the various parts of your project. These affect the way different elements are styled. See this article to learn about section layouts.
• Script Settings: Some script-specific settings are available when you compile to Final Draft FDX format.
• Separators: This defines what Scrivener uses as separators between folders, files, chapter headings, titles, and more in your final file. These can be empty lines, page breaks, special characters, etc.
• Styles: This section defines how styles applied in your project get formatted when compiling. You could use the same formatting as that of your styles or change it. See this article to learn about using styles in Scrivener.
• Text Layout: This section covers some general settings for the overall layout of your compiled documents.
• CSS: CSS settings are available when you export to ePub and allow you to paste a style sheet into the compile format so it is added to your ePub file.
• Document Title Links: This affects how document titles are linked, such as in tables of contents.
• HTML Elements: For ePub files only, this allows you to specify which Scrivener styles are converted to specific HTML styles. If you use the built-in eBook compile format, which is available if you select Compile For ePub Ebook, these elements are preset, and you most likely won’t need to change them.
• Transformations: This allows you to convert smart quotes to dumb quotes, underline hyperlinks, and more.
• Replacements: This section allows you to replace certain types of shortcuts you may have used in your project, or replace specific words with other words, such as if you want to change the name of a character.
• Statistics: You can define how the words in your project are counted: whether footnotes, comments, and annotations are counted; whether front or back matter is included, etc.
• Tables or Tables & Lists: You can stitch tables together (Tables category for most document types), or set formatting for Tables & Lists for ePubs.
• Footnotes & Comments: This lets you format footnotes, endnotes, and comments.
• Page Settings: You can set different headers and footers for odd- and even-numbered pages, set margins, and more.
• PDF Settings: This lets you create a PDF outline, optimize a PDF for print-on-demand, and more.
• Compatibility: This gives some compatibility options for word processor formats, such as RTF, DOCX, and ODT.

Testing your compile format

As you work on customizing your compile format, you may want to test it to see if your changes are appropriate. You can click Test to have Scrivener compile your project and save it in the selected file type. You can check the results, and then make more changes if they aren’t as you want. Note that these changes only get saved when you click the Save button on this dialogue. When you do so, Scrivener closes the Compile Format editor. So it’s a good idea to iterate, tweaking your compile format and testing, then saving when you think it’s just right.

This article, and especially the section just above discussing the many categories in the Compile Format editor, only scratches the surface of what these compile formats offer. Chapter 24 of the Scrivener manual covers all this in detail.

That said, unless you’re creating PDFs or ePubs for direct sale, you won’t need to use most, if any, of these advanced compile features. But if you do want to generate custom-designed ebooks, then these options will give you the maximum flexibility over your finished books.