Move rather than copy files into Scrivener

[michaelbywater]

With the usual caveat that I may be being very stupid...

I have a large number ("a whole bunch", to be precise) of mp3 voice recordings which I am transcribing in Scrivener.

It's cumbersome to have to go to the Finder and delete the ones I've finished with.

Ideally I could *move* rather than *copy* them into Scrivener, so when they're gone from Scrivener they're gone from the Finder too.

I don't seem to be able to do that. Can I? If I can, how? If I can't, is this something worth putting in on a future version perhaps?

[KB]

Hi Michael,

Can't you just import them into Scrivener (so that they are stored as a copy inside your binder) and then delete them from the binder before the transcription stage? Then transcribe and delete the file from Scrivener once you've finished so that it no longer exists anywhere.

All the best,
Keith

[michaelbywater]

Exactly what I've been doing (I assume "delete them from the binder" is a typo for "Finder") -- I just wondered if there was a more direct way. A bit like the DevonThink Pro "import and delete" Folder Action

[KB]

Oops, yes, that was supposed to be "delete from the Finder", sorry. In that case, no, there's no quicker way of doing this, I'm afraid. I'd be nervous of adding anything that deleted files from the Finder automatically, even an "Import and Delete" explicit action, because in my experience, users often experiment and don't realise what they are experimenting with, so I am certain that if I added something like this, we'd immediately have users emailing us asking us why Scrivener was deleting files from the Finder, and panicking. I'll confer with Ioa to see what he thinks, though, seeing as he deals with more support issues than I do these days. But my fear is that someone would accidentally call "Import and Delete" on their home folder.
All the best,
Keith

[Jaysen]

or on the scrivener project itself…

Is there a link function that would reduce the duplication. Is the real need to remove the file from the original location? Then you are really only deleting form the finder, which I don't think it that big a deal.

But then I'm headless. I may have lost perspective.

[robertdguthrie]

Yikes! I don't think this "import and delete" thing is something I'd want in Scrivener; especially because .doc files are imperfectly translated into Scrivener, possibly losing some information (tracked changes, styles, etc...). Better to just select a bunch of files, drag them into Scrivener's binder, and then CMD-delete them from the Finder. That should be a fairly efficient way to accomplish what you want without introducing a (in my opinion) destructive feature like "import & delete".

[KB]

Yikes! I don't think this "import and delete" thing is something I'd want in Scrivener; especially because .doc files are imperfectly translated into Scrivener, possibly losing some information (tracked changes, styles, etc...).

That's a very good point - we could get users wiping out stuff they need in Word files, not realising that the translation is inevitably imperfect.

Jaysen's suggestion is good, though - you could just import them as aliases into Scrivener, so that they only exist in the Finder. But you still have references to them in Scrivener that you'd probably want to clean up once you deleted them from the Finder, so it still involves two lots of deleting, just less disk space usage.

All the best,
Keith