How do I merge all open projects in to one Scrivener instance with running tabs at the top for each project? I don’t see the Window > Merge all windows option that is included in the Mac version of Scrivener 3. Thanks.
FWIW, the Mac opens projects in one window as tabs. Windows opens projects as new windows.
But, in Windows, is it possible to consolidate all open projects into one Scrivener instance with tabs once you have multiple projects open?
Not at this point. It might be a future enhancement after v.3 is released. I don’t know.
If it ever gets released. 
Ha! And we keep bringing these things up… 
The tabbed window is a macOS system feature, not something built into Scrivener. It’s possible this could be developed and implemented for the Windows version down the road, if it’s technically feasible in the framework Scrivener uses, but it’s not in the immediate plans.
Thanks. That is what I thought. I use both the Mac and Windows Scrivener and haven’t decided which “open window/tabbed window” workflow I prefer. Typically I use one window/project open at a time but, when I do have two projects open, I think I prefer having them in separate windows to more easily drag and drop from one to the other. Just my preference.
It’s an interesting question. I think I’m probably with Jestar. I do use programs that create multiple tabs for different items within a single window: my browser, of course, for one; and the word processor Nota Bene. But these tabs hold Web pages and documents, respectively. I find Nota Bene’s approach much easier to navigate and keep track of than MS Word’s separate windows for all documents, since when I have multiple documents open, they’re generally all part of a single project (and if needed NB can tile or cascade them within its single window).
Which brings us to Scrivener. For me, there is so much going on in a Scrivener project that to have multiple projects open as tabs within a single window feels more complicated rather than simpler. But I’ve never worked with Scriv on a Mac, with its tabbing feature, so I don’t really know what that would be like.
Personally, I like individual windows on my iMac, which has a big screen. On the laptop, tabs seem to work better. OTOH, I’m also less prone to open multiple projects on the laptop to begin with.
Katherine
I think you’ve hit quite an important point here, Jestar…drag-drop is a very useful thing, and windows give that…
As someone who frequently uses a trio of projects for reference and one of them for actually creating new content as well, I use the tabbed interface with Scrivener. In fact, that’s the default for all of my apps, as I prefer it as the default.
If such a feature were to be shoe-horned into Scrivener, and if it were implemented with the same features, you’d be able to drag a tab out of a single window to make two. I do that occasionally, when I want to drag documents between two projects (and/or I want to see them side-by-side), but more frequently, I have 10+ application windows open, with multiple documents per application (Preview for PDFs, Safari, Pages and/or Nisus Writer Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Devonthink, etc…). Tabs in all/most apps help me tame the chaos.
But having tabs only for Scrivener… I don’t know how much that would help in the same scenario.
I’m on Windows and use https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/. Works perfect. I can get tabs in Windows, Scrivener, or both.
I just watched an online presentation on Scrivener where the presenter was using a Mac. Much of the presentation was about themes and creating a new theme, none of which is of great interest to me. But the one item which did fascinate me was seeing that he had multiple projects open as tabs.
Since Scriv 3 for Windows was to bring us up to the Mac level, I immediately spent some time hunting to see how to achieve a tabbed display in Beta11, without success as this thread clearly spells out.
While hunting under the Window menu drop-down listing, I came upon “Bring all to front” which gave me momentary hope. But it doesn’t do anything visible as far as I can see and the manual doesn’t shed any light on the purpose of this item.
I would vote for the ability to have tabbed entries for all open projects if the Devs ever wish to offer this.
This will pull all open Scrivener project windows to in front of other open apps.
The goal is to bring feature parity where possible. In this case, from what I understand, the tabbed display is a feature that’s available in the Mac OS programming framework – it got added in by Apple a few versions back, so wasn’t difficult for KB to support in the Mac version. (In fact, depending on how Apple added it in, KB may not have needed to make any code changes at all other than recompiling with a newer version of the Apple dev tools/SDK to pick up the updated libraries.)
In the Windows/Qt version, apparently the tabbed interface is a separate class of window controls that isn’t unified with the type of windows controls being used in Scrivener. It would be a much larger job to go back through and adjust all the behavior, and the cascade of side effects would probably be fairly significant – hence why we’re not seeing it during the beta (at least to this point.) Those kind of wide-scale changes would most likely break a lot of existing functionality for a feature that’s a “nice to have” but not a “need to have.”
Ah, thanks for the explanation. That explains why I didn’t see anything happen when I clicked on that item. I always have Scrivener open on a separate desktop - I mostly have only one application per desktop.
I still like tabbed items rather than separate windows.
Yeah, a lot of us would like that as an option, at the very least, but if I remember correctly the devs said they would take a look at it after the v3 release and not before. In the meantime, at least multi-project works smoothly! I have a widescreen Dell curved monitor and can place project windows side-by-side to refer back and forth – something I can’t easily do with a tabbed interface.
I’m—intrigued. I’m assuming if I wanted to drag and drop between windows I’d have to (temporarily?) ungroupy them?
Based on jandrewnelson’s suggestion I’m now trying Groupy. Its got a 30 day free trial and is very cheap if or when I chose to buy it. (I’ve had one glitch with MS Word so far). It doesn’t look like you have to ‘ungroupy’ them to drag and drop. For Windows explorer you can grab a folder in one tab, drag it into the tab you want it in (which then opens) and then drop it where you want it to land.