Scrivener For Writers

SCRIVENER FOR WRITERS
Frontmatter
Scrivener for Writers
Windows edition
© 2012 Ivan Pope
Published by AndMoreAgain Ltd
Scrivener and other marks ©Literatureandlatte.com
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form
without prior permission of the author.
Scrivener and other marks ©Literatureandlatte.com

ToC
Scrivener will change your life
What's so great about Scrivener?
What's in this book
Scrivenerwriter.com
Getting Started
Introducing Scrivener
Bare Bones Start
How to Write a Book
Getting Help and Support
Take a tutorial
Getting a copy of Scrivener
Trial version
Get to grips with Projects
What makes up a Project?
Making a new Project
Opening existing projects
Saving and making copies
A quick look at formatting
Everything in the Binder
What is the Binder?
How the Binder is organised
Contents of the Binder
Labels
Status
Getting Set Up
Backup First!
Your Work Environment
The Binder
The Editor
The Inspector
Turning panes off
View Mode
The Toolbar
Customising the Toolbar
The Format Bar
Filling your Folders
The Base Folders
Importing text files
Importing other document types
Text file types
Importing media files
Quick start with Project Templates
What is a Template
Choosing the right Template
Making your own Template
Managing Preferences
Setting Preferences
Saving Preferences
General
Appearance
Corkboard
Navigation
Editor
Auto-Corrections
Keyboard
Backup
Finding Your Way around

Exploring View Modes
View Modes
Editing and Scrivenings
Corkboard view
Outline view
Full Screen Mode
Quick Access
Linking Documents together
Layouts Panel
Header Bar
Footer Bar
Using the Inspector
What is the Inspector?
Meta-Data view
Document Support Panes
Notes
Reference Links
Keywords
Snapshots
Planning your Project

Planning with a Corkboard
The Corkboard
Corkboard Settings
Index Cards
Outlining
What is the Outliner?
Managing Columns
The Synopsis
Adding a synopsis
Compiling your Synopsis
Writing and Editing

Keeping tabs on things
Finding stuff
Search
Find by Formatting
Keywords
Notepads and bookmarks
Document v. Project Notes
Annotations and Footnotes
Converting Annotations
Scratch Pad
Great Tools
Working in Full Screen
Splitting the window
Looking stuff up from inside Scrivener
Need a name? Generate one.
Formatting
The relationship between Formatting and Compiling
Style sheets
Formatting Preferences
Formatting Bar
Convert options
Managing Your Writing

Working with Files
All about files
Adding new files
Levels
Promoting Files in the Binder
Counting your progress
Current word count
Page statistics
Project statistics
Targets and tracking
Word counts on the page
Collections
Collections
Adding to a Collection
Saving Search Results
Backup and Saving

Snapshots
Viewing Snapshots in the Inspector
Comparing Snapshots in the Inspector
Saving your work
Backups
Automatic Backup
Manual backup
Export files
Compiling
Compiling how you want it
You put it all in, now you have to get it all out again
12 things about Compiling
WYSIWYG or not
Summary Interface
All Options Interface
Format options
Compile output options
Formatting for compiling
Overview
Contents
Formatting Pane
Override Text and Notes formatting
Title Settings
Page Settings
Special Formatting Options
Meta-Data
Footnotes and Annotations
Adding a book cover
Transformations
KindleGen
Printing
Text Documents
Exporting
Exporting Binder Files
Drag and Drop
Scrivener will change your life.
That’s a big claim, I know. But, for writers, it is often true. If you find that
a big claim, take some time to read what professional published writers say
about it. Scrivener will help you get your book written and this book will
help you get the best out of Scrivener.
If you’re going to do it ... you may as well do it right.

Writers essentially fall into two camps: those who plan and those who
don’t, also known as planners and pantsers. Pantsers fly by the seat of their
pants. These camps can be broken down further almost ad infinitum, but
every writer knows which side they fall on. I am a pantser but I do tend to
do retrospective planning. I tend to originate a plan as I go along and I like
to keep a close watch on the structure of my writing projects. In many
ways, Scrivener is just perfect for the myriad different ways of
constructing a longer piece of writing. If you are fed up with prescriptive
programs (or Microsoft Word which I will try to avoid mentioning),
Scrivener works well for both sides because it is a hugely flexible tool that
allows you to use what works for you and to ignore the rest.
The world of the writer is changing fast. In a time of the internet, social
media, self-publishing, Facebook and the Kindle, blogging and author
platforms, writers need a flexible tool to enable them to stay on message.
Any long form piece of writing demands attention to project management,
proper organisation of research, a backup strategy, annotations and notes,
draft generation, formatting and finally, export of the finished work,
whether to a printer or into one of an ever increasing number of formats
for agent, publisher, print on demand or ebook.
As the industry goes through fundamental changes, the demands of all
participants become greater: that we should be more professional, more
organised, better marketers and more efficient producers of creative
output. Scrivener gives us better control of our writing, I believe, than any
comparable software.
Ever since the advent of the affordable computer and the word processor
liberated us from the tyranny of the pen and paper, writers have been
struggling to find a way to harness the power of silicon, to express
themselves fully without losing their way in thickets of the infinite. There
are many useful tools now in the writer’s armoury, some of which we
could not write without, but few would regard the straight word processor
as without huge inherent problems.
I spent most of my life intermittently starting novels only to tail off after a
few chapters as the momentum stalled and the immensity of the task ahead
became clearer. Even when I managed to get some way into a book, my
inability to go back and easily make changes, often led me to dump the
text in despair. The monolithic word processor may lend itself well to the
writer who starts at the start and writes a draft through to the end without
coming up with new ideas along the way and wanting to change the
structure of the thing.
There are so many issues around the construction of a novel (or any long
piece of writing), starting with research and going on through word after
word, chapter after chapter, first draft, revision and so on. It seems
imperative that we can at any time look back at what we have written and
judge where we have got to and what still needs to be done. A method of
splitting a long work into many smaller pieces is often a way to make
sense of the big picture. Whether these small pieces are later joined back
into one whole or published as is, that is up to the author.
When I came across Scrivener, my writing life changed overnight for the
better. I found that, no matter what hurdles I encountered along the way, I
could move on and on with my novels, looking back as I needed to,
refining the structure and organisation, but always adding to the story arc
until, in the fullness of time (the words still won’t write themselves), I
could get to the end of a book. Then, after allowing a short time to elapse,
I could start revision happy in the knowledge that any changes I wanted to
make I could make easily within the structure I had. To be honest, I am a
meddler with my books. I pull them this way and that, often realising in
the middle of a morning run that the order of play may be entirely wrong.
Ivan Pope
2012
Scrivener will change your life
What's in this book
Scrivenerwriter.com
SCRIVENER WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE
They say everyone has a book in them, but writing any long piece is a
complicated process, from the original idea, marshalling of sources,
research, filing of texts, creation of structure, rough drafting, editing and
production of final document. Scrivener helps writers of all types manage
this process.
Many writers coming to Scrivener find a tool that fits with what they want
to achieve. If you have spent much time trying to manage a complicated
mess of documents, files, texts, images and backups, your first encounter
with Scrivener might come as a revelation, leading to declarations of love.
Scrivener is used by all sorts of professional and amateur writers, from
best-selling and aspiring novelists to Hollywood scriptwriters, from
students and academics to lawyers and journalists: anyone who works on
long and difficult writing projects. While many other writing project
management tools impose their own workflows or limit themselves to
fiction-writing, Scrivener recognises that all writers of long-form texts
often face similar problems, and provides an array of flexible tools that
allow you to do things your way, no matter what kind of writing you do.
Those currently using Scrivener include Novelists, Short-Story Writers,
Screenwriters, Playwrights, Comedians, Lawyers, Journalists, Lecturers,
Academics and Students, Biographers and Memoirists, Business and
Technical Writers, Comics and Graphic Novel Writers, Translators
The main concepts of Scrivener are:
You can create any structure you want and change it as you go along.
You can choose a format to output your writing to including Word and eBook formats.
You can view your work in different ways to get an overview of the entire project.
You can restructure your work by simply dragging and dropping
You can view any document as a single part or as part of the longer text.
You can store research documents in different formats and media.
Scrivener is a writing studio for non-linear writing. What that means is you
can assemble your writing in almost any order you choose and you can use
almost anything as a building block for your writing. You can throw in any
piece of research that you come across, add sections, chapters, parts. You
can move them around, rewrite them, roll back and forth to previous
versions. You can make notes and label the fragments as your ideas come
together. Scrivener itself will keep track of every single file, every
fragment of writing, every discarded or worked over part of the whole. If
you need to, you can find and re-assemble scraps or entire chapters of your
text. And the beauty is that Scrivener does this without forcing you into an
unnatural way of working. Rather, it fits itself to your way of working.
What is that? You’ll find out when you start to use it.
Although Scrivener can look like a complicated piece of software, it is
actually very simple to get to grips with. Once you grasp its essential
organising principles, you can gather and write to your hearts content,
even if you never use any further functionality. But functionality there is in
spades, and this book aims to lay it all out for you to take advantage of, as
and when you are ready.
Because make no mistake, Scrivener can change your writing life. Whether
you like to just write in a simple writing environment or you spend weeks
planning your project on dozens of index cards before committing a single
word to paper, Scrivener will accommodate you.
Scrivener provides all the tools you need to prepare your manuscript for
submission or self-publishing. Once you’re ready to go, control everything
from how footnotes, headers and footers appear to fine-tuning the
formatting of each level of your draft—or keep it simple by choosing from
one of Scrivener’s convenient presets. Print a novel using standard
manuscript formatting. Export your finished document to a wide variety of
file formats, including Microsoft Word, RTF, PDF and HTMLmaking it
easy to share your work with others. Or self-publish by exporting to ePub
or Kindle formats to share your work via iBooks or Amazon, or for reading
on any e-reader.
We no longer work alone. Whether we sit in an ivory tower or in a
crowded cafe, we have the global internet at our fingertips and thus the act
of writing has changed forever.
The form and function of writing is changing very fast. Scrivener is
integrated into this new world and integrates us into it. Whether we choose
to utilise the functionality that we have is our choice—some no doubt
would still like to work with pencil on notepads, others create universal
hyperlinked literature. The truth is, there are thousands of ways to work
and millions of us working at it.
Scrivener works for all kinds of writing. At first I thought it was best for
longer form writing, but I soon realised that I was creating long form in
fragments and that I could easily use it for short form in its own right - the
tools are there and they work just as well.
What's in this book
Navigation
There is a Table of Contents for this book and you can jump to that at any
time. Also, each Part of the book also contains a sub-ToC and each
Chapter within the Parts contains a local ToC. The idea is that you can find
what you are looking for within a part of the book without always having
to return to the main ToC.
How to Write a Book
Getting Started
Getting Set Up
Writing and Editing
Managing Your Writing
Backup and Saving
Compiling
Printing
Exporting
There’s a lot of information in this book. Scrivener is a complicated

program with many many options. Now, writers are bad at getting on with
the job at hand and will find almost any excuse not to actually write. On
the other hand, once you’ve worked out a good working method you can
stick with it for years and increase your efficiency.
I wanted to give you all the tools that Scrivener offers in a way that allows
you to choose what you use and what you don’t.
The book does have a structure, but I don’t recommend that you slavishly
follow it.
Linkage
The book is cross linked in many directions. I suggest you use the power
of your ebook reader to bookmark interesting things and that you jump
about as the mood or interesting links takes you. One of the great things
about ebooks is that I can link from place to place and you can follow what
is of interest.
Need To Know
I’ve tried to give you as much information as you’ll need, but that means I
haven’t told you everything about everything. Scrivener themselves have a
wonderful four-hundred page manual for that. This book is designed to sit
inbetween that and a casual browse at the program.
I suggest you flick through this book first, marking interesting ideas,
things you haven’t heard of and in depth explanations of things you’ve
been using in a half hearted way.
I would avoid thinking you need to read it from cover to cover.
Scrivenerwriter.com
My website at http://scrivenerwriter.com contains an ongoing commentary
on Scrivener and other developments.
I’ve put some things that were originally in this book onto the site so they
are accessible to everyone. That includes all the comprehensive listings,
e.g. All the Preferences, All the Placeholders and All the Keyboard
Shortcuts. I’ll add more over time. My aim has been to keep this book as
manageable as possible.
Getting Started
Introducing Scrivener
GETTING STARTED
INTRODUCING SCRIVENER
Bare Bones Start
How to Write a Book
Take a tutorial
Trial version
Bare Bones Start
How to just get up and writing with Scrivener.
1. Choose a Template
There are several Template options that come with Scrivener, but to get
started you might as well choose the Blank Template. You can add in
anything you want and you'll soon find you have a complex setup of your
own.
The Blank Template

Take a look at the Novel Template as well. It has a bunch of pre set up
information and sections which will give you an idea of how to structure your
writing. But - you don't really need any of this to get started and it might just
confuse you.
Templates for fiction
2. Where to write
Choose the Blank Template and save the project. Now you'll have the basic
Scrivener window open.
This is a very simple place to start working. In the left hand column you have
three Folders: Draft, Research and Trash.
Draft is where you'll construct your work. Research is where you can put any
research documents you want. You can create more folders easily, but this
will do for starters.
Make sure you have highlighted the Draft folder and then click the Add
button.
This will create a new document in Draft. Name it, or click in the right hand
window and just start typing.
Keep typing until you finish, or until you reach a natural break point like a
chapter or section end. Then click the Add button again to get a new
document.
Scrivener saves everything as you go along.
You can make as many documents as you like - I create dozens of small bits
of text and rearrange them at will. You can drag them up and down in the left
hand column and your work will rearrange itself immediately. You can also
drag them into a different folder, like the Research folder (I make a Folder
called 'Extracted' and drag things that aren't working into it so that I can find
them again easily afterwards.
It does something else wonderful. If you use the Trash button that is next to
the Add button, it deletes the file, but it just puts it into another folder, called
Trash. And you can drag stuff out of there again at any time.
The Inspector and Index Cards
That's not very complicated, is it? Now, if you want to move on to the next
wonderful thing that Scrivener offers, how about Index Cards? You can plan
your entire novel on these.
Click the Inspector button at the top right of the screen.
This opens up a new column on the right hand side of the screen.
Type your card notes in the green bit in the right hand column. This will be
stored as a synopsis. You can make one for each part of your book, and then
display them all by clicking on the middle icon of Group Mode to show the
Cork Board with your cards pinned to it.
You can move these cards around in this view to re-organise your work.
Write in peace with Compose
Now you have the start of a long piece of work. You know how to make new
parts and to write in them, you know how to keep notes on your Index Cards
and you know how to re-organise your work as you go along. Scrivener will
save the work for you as you go.
All you have to do now is write, there is no excuse. If you want to write
without distraction, click the Compose button and you will get a plain writing
area with a black background. (Click Esc to return to the interface.)
And that's all you really need to get writing in Scrivener. There is, of course,
a lot more to it than that. But you may never use it. So go write that novel.
How to Write a Book
There are hundreds of ways to go about writing a novel and we probably
all use a different approach. Scrivener has a bunch of tools that smooth the
path through a long form project, but all this variety can be confusing.
Writers new to Scrivener often only find out about what the tools are good
for as they go along. I suggest finding things out before you start or as you
start and making a resolution to use those tools that fit your working
method.
Import your existing writing
Whatever you've got sitting around, you can just import it into Scrivener
easy peasy. If you have a document with a structure Scrivener will attempt
to import that structure. Or you can add # markers to break your work into
parts. You can even drag a file or a folder directly into Scrivener. If you
drag a file that contains multiple parts into Scrivener you will get a
structured document. Bingo. How easy is that?
Make as many notes as you need
Scrivener has a range of ways to add notes to your work as you go along.
You can add notes inside the text or alongside the text. You can add notes
to a specific file or to the entire project. Just add notes as you go along—
then you can go back and find out what you were thinking.
Create keywords and add them to pages
A good way to add value to your document as you write it is to create a
range of keywords and add relevant ones to each part as you go along.
Write your synopsis in note form to make an outline
A synopsis is a little outline or note added to any part of the project. Don’t
be put off by the name—we’re talking outline size bites of text here. You
can even automatically generate a synopsis from the start of the text by
clicking a button.
Create character names
When you need characters, where do they come from? Scrivener has a
built in name generator that can churn out more names than you’ll ever
need. Set the parameters and set it running. Choose something that works
for you or start again. If nothing else, it’s a great inspiration to get you
closer to that perfect name.
Only see what you are working on
In the language of Scrivener it’s called Hoisting the Binder. Apart from
sounding to me like pirate language, as in ‘splice the mainbrace’, it means
taking a section of the project and removing everything else from view.
This works great when you are working on a chapter or a section of your
book and you want to stop thinking about everything else.
Make a collection of relevant items
Create a collection by adding any section of your project to a ‘collection’
as you go along. You can then pull out this collection at any point and
work on it, letting you get to the nitty gritty of writing or editing without
distraction.
Add a cover page for your book
If you’re going to output your work to an online format such as ebooks or
Amazon’s Kindle, you will need to add a cover. Simply import the cover
design and designate the appropriate file when you compile and it will be
added as if by magic.
Print your index cards
If you create index cards for use on your project you can print them for use
in the real world.
Make templates and fill them out
Character backgrounds? Places? Events? Timeframe? Make a Template
and fill one out every time you create a new person (or other thing). Then,
split the screen and have instant access to this background information.
Break your long work down into parts and move them around
If you're used to working in Word or another word processor you will
either have one very long document or a messy folder full of chapters. In
Scrivener you'll soon find that shorter is better. You can break that long
document down on import, or do it manually. I find that I'm forever
breaking parts of my novel down into smaller parts, then growing them
again and then breaking them down again. This might sound a bit
complicated, but it seems a very natural process. As I recognise the natural
break points in the book, in the chapter, in the scene, I create a new part
and split what I'm writing. It's easy to join things back together again, but I
don't. Instead I find that I rearrange things to make a better flow. You can
do this in the Outliner or in the Corkboard. Magic.
Set writing targets and track them
OK, we all need to keep on keeping on. How many words is this novel
going to be? Where have you got to? What's the target for this session?
How you doing with that? Scrivener lets you set targets and tracks them,
so you can set a daily target that resets to 0 at midnight. That's very
addictive! You can have your targets on screen all the time or you can look
them up when you want. One of my favourite things is to set word counts
for every section of the book (non-fiction generally) and show them all in
the Outliner so I can do a quick visual check when I'm running up to
deadlines. You can also check across the whole document or the current
selection - how many words or how many pages have I written. And how
about this - you can check any text for word frequency. Am I overusing
particular words again? No. Phew.
Build a plan using index cards
So you like to plan your masterwork. I do too, though I find that if I add
too much detail at the start it is pointless, the book goes on its merry way
without the plan. What I end up doing is roughing out the story, starting to
write and then adding notes on the Index cards as I go along. After a while
these cards start to add up to a plan which I can look at in isolation. I can
then follow the plan or rearrange it or rewrite it. Real time planning, I call
it. But you'll find that you can work the way you want. You can build a
great hierarchy of index cards with your plan on and print them out for
reference. Then you can reorganise them as you want, add notes to them,
colour code them (one thing I'm good at is colour coding the PoV of
scenes so I can see at a glance how the chapters are panning out).
Write in a distraction free environment
This is a simple one. You can blank out the background and you can add
your own picture, maybe a view of the sea or the mountains to pretend you
are sitting in a cabin in the Rockies churning out your masterwork (or a
random image if you are me). Remember, the aim is to write and to think
and to control what you write. Distraction is bad. At this point I would like
to add that the worst distraction is not the background but the internet. I
swear by a little application called Freedom, for Mac or Windows,that
allows you to turn the whole internet off for a fixed period of time (that's
off from your perspective, not off for everyone else, that would be a bit
unfair).
Work in two windows at the same time
Yes, you can split the working window in two and write in one while
referencing a document in another. Or write in two at the same time (ever
wanted to revise the end of one part and the start of another at the same
time?). You can split the page horizontally or vertically and put what you
want in either side. So, on the left, in my working panel, I have the chapter
I'm working on (or the fragment really) and in the right panel I can choose
- the fragment before or the fragment after if I'm looking at how to join
things. A page of research so I can read what I want as I write, referring
back and forth, this is a lovely way to work and I really wish I'd had it
when I was at university. Or you can put any other page or part into the
'other' panel - it just makes referring to what you done before so much
easier. And don't forget you can split horizontally if you want.
9. Keep your research documentation in the same place
Scrivener will accept anything you want to throw at it, so you can chuck all
your different kinds of files into Research folders and have access to them
when you want. Pictures, web pages, screenshots, imports, word documents -
anything really can reside in Scrivener. You'll also find that everything you
write remains in your project, even if you 'delete' it. Scrivener doesn't throw
anything away, it just puts it in the Trash and you can easily pull it out again.
I make an 'Extracted' folder and I pull entire parts out but keep them hanging
around for later us. They say you should never throw any writing away, and I
never do. Try that in Word.
10. Never lose anything because of auto backups and manual 'snapshots'
Scrivener backs up and backs up and backs up automatically, so your work is
safe. You can do manual exports any time you want. When you start a major
revision, just take a Snapshot, and you retain a copy of the original in case it
all goes horribly horribly wrong. And yes, you can view Snapshots alongside
the current version, and mix and match.
Bonus! Export straight to the format you need including iBooks and
straight to Amazon Kindle!
You can export everything to Word, RTF, Open Office, Final Draft or plain
text. However, Compile is the powerhouse of Scrivener. Scrivener is about
writing, not about formatting. But when you come to output you can use a
range of preset formats or you can create your own custom output. Templates
for compiling include Ebook, Outline, Novel, Script, Synopsis. You can
export as above and also to eBook and Kindle .mobi files (or to
MultiMarkdown if you are a smart person). You can choose precisely what to
include in your compile from headings to notes to synopses to extra material
and book covers.
All in all, Scrivener seems to give you all you need and more. It's
comprehensive, but you can start quickly. Many writers find it addictive, in a
good sense, that it increases their productivity and the quality of their writing.
Can't say better than that. Give it a try.
Apart from this book, there are various sources of help and support for
Scrivener users. Scrivener themselves provide excellent user support, but it
is always worth looking at the support wiki and the user forums before
emailing user support if you can’t find it in this book.
These are all accessible through the Help > menu.
Wiki
A wiki is a user created and maintained information system on the web. It
is kept up to date and filled in by enthusiastic Scrivener users and there is
no reason why you shouldn’t soon be contributing to the Scrivener wiki.
You can find the wiki at Scrivener wiki
FAQ
There is a good FAQ (Frequenly Asked Questions list) at the wiki. This
provides a quick reference list of things that get asked all the time.
Support Forum
The Scrivener Support Forum is a lively place full of ideas, questions,
advice and answers. You can register for free and use it to search for
solutions to particular problems and to meet and discuss things with other
Scrivener users. The Scrivener staff also read the forums and generally
pitch in with their own views. Conversations can be lively here but it is a
great place to catch up with issues that are relevant in the community.
The forum is one of the best sources of help if you get stuck with a
particular problem — but always remember to search before asking to see
who has already asked (and answered) your question.
Interactive Tutorial
The Scrivener tutorial is an interactive project that gets you introduced to
the program. You can make real edits to the project that is used in the
tutorial so it is advisable to make a different project to use for this after it
has opened.
Documentation
You can download the Scrivener manual from their website and read it
online. It is a big document and very comprehensive. If you need to
understand something in depth, this is a good place to go.
Technical Support
If all else fails you can email Scrivener technical support. They are always
friendly and very helpful, but remember that there are few of them and
they have to deal with a growing horde of Scrivener users. It’s much more
satisfying to answer your own question using the resources listed above. In
a short while you’ll become an expert in your own right and be helping
others out in their questions.
You are also welcome to email me with questions and I will do my best to
answer. Email me at ivan@scrivenerwriter.com
The website for this book has more information and will be updated as
Scrivener is. Feel free to visit Scrivener Writer
Take a tutorial
Scrivener provides a great range of tutorials that you can watch as and
when you want. The Introduction to Scrivener tutorial lasts for ten minutes
and covers all the main features. This will give you an overview of the
main features and give you a good grounding to get you started.
You an access all the tutorials from Scrivener itself using Help > Video
Tutorials.
In addition to the Introduction tutorial, there are many more available on
the Scrivener website at http://www.literatureandlatte.com/video.php
Snapshots Shows you how to use ‘snapshots’ to save versions of your work as you go along
and then to revert to them later if needed.
Page View You can set your working environment up as a virtual page or two with the
dimensions of your choice.
Composition Mode Backdrop Composition mode removes all distracting material from the
page except the document you are working on.
Composition mode removes all distracting sidebars and menus.

Inspector Footnotes & Comments
Name Generator When you need a name for a character, Scrivener provides a name
generator that comes up with as many ideas as you want.
QuickReference Windows Open a floating window to see extra reference material at any
point in your project.
Revision Marking Mode Mark changes for collaborators and editors.
Custom Meta-Data Keep track of the information you want.
Exporting eBooks Send your book to Kindle or ePub format when Compiling.
Document Templates & Custom Icons Templates are a powerful part of Scrivener, allowing
you to set up and save standard formats for your work.
Folder Sync How to sync your work with Dropbox. This allows you to share your work with
others or to access it from anywhere on the internet.
Simplenote Sync Sync with Simplenote for the iPad
Sync with Index Card for the iPad Sync with Index Card for the iPad.
To get your own copy of Scrivener you just download the version you need
from the Scrivener website.
Mac version
http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
Trial version
Try before you buy
Scrivener is available on a generous free Trial version which gives you
thirty days to fully test out the software before you decide to buy. The
thirty days are added up each day you actually start up the program, so if
you only use it one or two days a week you can string out your free trial
for several months. This will give you ample opportunity to get to know
whether Scrivener works for you and also to work through what you need
of this book. You can also import any work you have already written and
see how Scrivener adds to your workflow.
After the trial ends, if you decide not to buy Scrivener, you can export
everything you’ve written in it. If you buy a licence, of course, you just
continue to use it as usual.
GETTING STARTED
GET TO GRIPS WITH PROJECTS
Scrivener is based on the concept of ‘projects’. If you are used to using a
word processor such as Word you probably think in terms of ‘documents’.
A Scrivener project contains and manages a number of documents. The
idea is to store everything related to your project in a single place rather
than trying to remember where you put everything.
A Scrivener Project is one complete work in progress, no matter how many
parts it is comprised of or how many different things to add to it. Think of
a Project as one ring binder or one folder stuffed full of all the
photocopies, newspaper cuttings, rough notes, photos that you’ve collected
as research alongside a notepad on which you are writing the thing itself.
The folder may contain the seeds of a great contemporary novel, a masters
thesis or dozens of poems. It doesn’t matter what you put in a project, it’s
a container within which you manage your progress.
So, while you are writing your project in Scrivener, you are also adding
research documents, background notes, character backgrounds, settings,
images, photos. You can also import web pages, pdfs and other documents
that you want to use as part of your writing.
It helps to think of a Scrivener project as a folder full of documents, at the
heart of which is your written work. Just as Scrivener will help you
construct your long text, it will help you manage all the bits and pieces
that surround it.
File > Back Up > Back Up To ... allows you to create zipped-up backups
of your project
Most of your work will fall easily into separate projects, but sometimes
your approach will need a little more thought. Scrivener is designed for
long form writing, but it is also very useful for the management of
multiple short form writing. If you write poetry or journalism or short
stories, you might like to create a single project to keep all of your work in
a single project.
As it is so simple to create a new project at any time, consider creating
time based projects for shorter work. If you are prolific, a monthly
management project would work fine. Otherwise, maybe a yearly
collection of short pieces would work for you.
I find that a Scrivener project works well not only for things I am actually
working on, but also for ideas and the early planning stages of projects.
When I think of something that I might write in the future I tend to open
the relevant Scrivener management project and create a new folder for that
putative work. I can then write any notes directly into the project space
and add any web pages or other documents that might come in handy. I can
add further thoughts and research to the project so I can find it all if and
when I come to write the piece. If I never get around to writing it, no harm
is done as it costs nothing to create new Scrivener projects or folders in
Scrivener.
Create a Scrivener project to use as a notebook and make a new folder in it
every time you want to jot down an idea.
Scrivener remembers what you have been working on before and opens up
those Projects when you fire it up. You might like to just rely on this to
always have your recent projects open.
If you have closed something that you now want to work on again, you can
use File > Recent Projects which will drop down a list of recently opened
Projects.
You can also go and find something that doesn’t show up in this list using
File > Open...
A Scrivener project file is really a folder, and the formatting of items you
import is preserved. These files can be viewed/watched/listen to within
Scrivener, or opened in an external editor using Scrivener’s contextual
menu.
Moving Projects
If you need to move a Project manually on the desktop, make sure you’ve
closed it in Scrivener first.
If you lose a project, searching for .scriv on your computer will bring up
all Scrivener projects.
Saving
Scrivener automatically saves changes made to projects. If you makes no
changes for two seconds, Scrivener will auto-save without interrupting your
work. That means more or less every two seconds your work will be saved.
Having said that, I find it hard to break the habit of a lifetime and I find
myself manually saving my work at natural breaks with Cmd-S. There is no
harm in this, it just takes a part of a second out of my life each time I do it.
There are also several other ways of creating saved and backed up versions of
your project manually.
To see where a project is saved, click on the .scriv icon next to the project
name at the very top of the window and choose > Path
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. Tools > Options > General allows you can
change the period Scrivener waits to auto-save.
Backing up
Scrivener is excellent at backing up your work and you really would have to
work quite hard to lose any work once you are using Scrivener. This is one of
the huge advantages that Scrivener gives over other word processors—the
peace of mind is worth thousands.
Backup destinations and routines are set in Tools > Options > Backup
See Backup First!
Copying Projects
You can make a copy of any project using the standard File > Save As... To
create a backup or working copy of your project.
Export
You can export your project to:
Rich Text Format (RTF)
Microsoft Word
Open Office
HTML
Final Draft
Plain Text
See Exporting
Formatting in Scrivener is different to formatting in most word processing
documents. Although you will recognise a lot of similar functionality you
may also struggle to understand at first what you can and cannot do.
Scrivener is designed for writing, and the idea is that excessive formatting
while writing is just a bad thing. I think most of us can recognise that this is
the case while we still like to make our documents look like the finished
article as we go along.
Of course, an 80,000 word book doesn’t need to look like anything apart
form typewritten form while it is being written, and Scrivener more than
comes into its own here with a plethora of tools to help you manage the
process from start to end.
It’s when you get to projects that will be going directly from Scrivener to
output that formatting begins to be somewhat more important. It is worth
understanding right at the start that Scrivener was designed to help you write
your work with the assumption that you would export it into a layout program
(or Microsoft Word) when you wanted to do heavy lifting on the formatting.
However, Scrivener itself does have a lot of tools that allow formatting,
which leaves us in something of a confused state.
Preferences only affect text formatting for new documents. For existing docs,
use Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style.
There are really two things to learn about formatting:
1. How much formatting to add to your document as you go along and what
is the most efficient manner of handling this.
2. How to generate (export via Compile) your document with appropriate
formatting in it so that wherever it is going gets a document that is more or
less ready to work with.
We will look at both these issues later on.
For more on Formatting see Formatting and Formatting for compiling
GETTING STARTED
EVERYTHING IN THE BINDER
What is the Binder?
Labels
Status
What is the Binder?
The Binder is really the core organising space of Scrivener. Although it is
just a view of what you have in a Scrivener project, it is at the same time like
a wonderful organising system with a lot of built in tools to help you manage
a growing project.
Like all parts of Scrivener, there is no requirement to use all of the features
available here. You don’t even need to know about most of them. But in
order to be creative and flexible in what you write, you need to understand
what part the Binder plays in managing your work.
The Binder Pane
The binder is the left hand column. It opens by default and, although you can
close it at any point using View > Layout > Hide Binder or by pressing Ctrl-
Shift-B, you will find that it is almost always worth keeping it open. The only
reason to close it is when you need a little extra screen space.
The Binder has several different states and background colours. In its basic
state it is headed with the word Binder. You will find when you use a tool
like Collections that the Binder will be renamed to Search Results. You can
always return to the basic Binder view by clicking the small x at the bottom
of the Binder window.
File > Export > Files to reproduce selected binder structure as files and
folders in the Finder.
The Binder
The Binder contains Folders and Files. Although you may feel at home with
these concepts from other places, there are some unique things about Folders
and Files in Scrivener that are worth understanding at this early stage. There
are three types of things in the Binder:
Folders: you will recognise the folder icon from many other applications. The folder in Scrivener
works in much the same way, you can put other folders and files inside it.
Files: you will also recognise files from many other applications. Files are single documents that
can sit inside folders or inside other documents.
File stacks: file stacks are something new to most of us. Unlike in most applications, in Scrivener
you can create new documents inside existing documents. This makes the top level document
into a container for anything you put inside it.
Making new containers

Let’s see how a normal document changes into a container or document
stack.
Click on the Drafts folder in the Binder.
Create a new document.
Project > New Text or Ctrl-N
Type a name for the new document.
Do this before clicking away from the new document. You will see that the new document is a
single document icon.
Type or paste some text into the Editor window.
The new document will be automatically saved every two seconds.
Select the new document in the Binder.
Create another new document and give it a name in the same way.
You will now see the the first document you made has a double document
icon, the second one a single document icon. The higher level document has
become a container and the lower level document is inside it.
You can drag items from the binder into the editor header bar as another way
of opening them.
The Binder has multiple levels in which files and folders can sit. Each time
you place a file or folder inside another container, it will move one level to
the right. This is like a standard outliner, which is why the Binder is often
described as an outliner. By creating multiple containers all containing
further containers, you will make a hierarchy that works for you. There is no
prescribed manner of doing this or any single desired outcome. What we are
aiming for is what works for you and you will find your own working
method as you go along.
As well as an up and down hierarchy, the Binder is organised on a left to
right hierarchy of Levels. Each time you place a document inside a container,
a new level is created and the document that is inside another moves one
place to the right.
Any document or folder can be dragged out of its container and dropped into
another one or placed between folders.
Top level Binder folders
As mentioned earlier, when you start any new project, you will find there are
three existing top level folders that cannot be deleted. These are Draft,
Research and Trash. Each of these can be renamed to anything, but they will
retain their functionality.
You can add any number of new folders at the top level, or you can create
your storage system within the existing folders. Most people mix the two
approaches. As with everything in Scrivener, you will find your own working
method as you go along.
Items in the Binder can be moved by using simple drag and drop. Click and
hold on a file or folder, and drag it up or down the outline. As you move it
you will see the target highlighted. If a container is circled the object will
drop inside, space between items is marked with a line.
When you reach the place you want to move it to, release the object and it
will be moved.
Using the Outliner to show and hide contents
As both folders and file stacks can contain a hierarchy of further folders and
files, it is important to be able to quickly hide and reveal their contents.
You will notice that every container has a small grey arrow to its left.
Clicking on this arrow will open up the container and show all the contents.
In reverse, if the container is currently open, clicking on the arrow will close
up the container. In this way you can quickly access files and folders that are
stored within the hierarchy.
Opening containers with the Arrow keys
In addition to clicking on the arrow, a keyboard shortcut is to use the Right
and Left Arrow keys to open and close containers.
Revealing everything
If you need to reveal everything with one command, use View > Outline >
Expand All (and the opposite > Collapse All) which will reveal the entire
outline in one go.
Binder Header
The header of the Binder is normally a narrow bar that simply contains the
name Binder. However, when you perform certain actions such as Hoisting
parts of the Binder, you will see this bar change to indicate what part of the
Binder you are viewing. There are other actions that radically change the
header content, such as Search and viewing Collections.
Binder Footer
The basic footer of the Binder contains:
a shortcut to add a new file (+)
a shortcut to add a new folder
a menu of Binder actions
When part of the Binder is hoist or you have performed a search, the footer
also contains a close icon which is a an x in a circle. This will get you back to
the main binder.
Labels
Labels are a way of differentiating files and folders using colour. As with
most Scrivener tools, the use of labels and the colours assigned to them, is up
to you. You decide whether to show Label colours, not only in the Binder but
for icons in the Binder and also on index cards and in Outliner columns.
You will also see both Label and Status in the General window of the
Inspector when this is turned on.
You will find that Labels are a very powerful tool as part of your planning
and management. How you use them is up to you. We go into more detail on
Labels in Planning your Project
Project Settings allows you to set up your own list of labels and status
descriptions, & you can rename 'Label' & 'Status'.
Turning on labels in the Binder
Before you can see labels in the Binder you need to turn them on using View
> Use Label Colour In > Binder. When you have done this, any labels that are
already set will be visible in the Binder listing. If no labels are assigned then
you won’t see any change and you’ll have to apply some labels to see how
this works.
Adding or changing a label
Right click on the file or folder you wish to label.
From the menu that pops up, roll over Label and a list of available label colours will drop down.
Choose the label colour that you want to apply.
Creating your own label names and colours

You can create your own range of label colours by following the instructions
to add a label but choosing the Edit... option from the menu as above instead
of choosing a pre-set colour.
After opening the label window, double-click on an existing label name to edit it.
Double-click on an existing label colour to edit it.
You can add new labels using the + button at the bottom of the window and delete labels using
the - button.
Set up a blank project with your preferred keywords, labels, font, colours, etc
and use File > Save As Template to use it as a base for new projects.
Assigning labels to multiple documents
To assign a label or status to multiple documents at the same time, first Ctrl-
click on all the documents you want to select. Then use the Adding a label
process above to add labels.
Status
You can also add a Status to files and folders in the same way that Labels are
added. The difference is that, unlike a Label, a Status does not give its
recipient any obvious marking when added. The main value of a Status is in
the main Outliner, where you can use assigned status to track progress in
your work. A combination of Label and Status can provide a great
management system for your writing. You can also see and change the Status
in the Inspector.
The default Status settings are:
To Do
First Draft
Rough Notes
Revised Draft
Final Draft
Done
Ctrl-clicking on a multiple selection of documents allows you to assign a

label or status to all of them at once.
Adding or changing the status of documents and folders
1. Right click on the file or folder you wish to alter the status of.
2. From the menu that pops up, roll over Status and a list of available status options will drop
down.
3. Choose the status setting that you want to apply.
You can also set the Status from the General pane of the Inspector
This is related to editing a Label as described above.
Creating your own Status names

As with Labels, you can create your own Status settings. Obviously you can
use Status for anything that fits with your working process by creating your
own sequence of markers.
Follow the instructions to add or change a label and choosing Edit... from
the menu as above. Double click on any Status name to edit it and add new
Status names by using the + button at the bottom of the window.
Getting Set Up
Backup First!
Your Work Environment
Filling your Folders
Quick start with Project Templates
Managing Preferences
GETTING SET UP
Backup First!
I want to get a word in here about Backups. One of the most common cries of
anguish I hear is All my work has disappeared. Almost always (always?), on
further examination, this is found not to be true. But it’s scary. And Scrivener
reallly doesn’t let this happen. Of course it’s always possible to destroy all
the backups, but it’s very very hard to do it by mistake. Then, if you don’t
know where to look for a backup you won’t find it there.
I want to reassure you at the start.
Some of you may have imported large works, or will be just about to. Others,
on discovering the beauty of Scrivener, will gallop off on your writing (as
you should) with never a look back over your shoulder. Backups will be the
last thing on your mind—until the unthinkable (but not undoable) happens.
And it does. Everyone loses work, everyone has a computer that just dies,
everyone accidentally deletes whole folders. House fires happen. Computers
get stolen The mantra is: Backup. Backup. Backup.
I know there is about a hundred exciting things that you want to go and look
at and try out. Writers love things that divert from writing and Scrivener
provides lots of baubles to play with. But stop and set this up first.
Luckily Scrivener knows all about creating backups of various types. The
most important one is the one that you’ll never have to think about again: the
automatic backup. Set this one up on day one and you’ll not have to do it
again. You can literally forget about it until the unthinkable happens.
Use File > Back Up > Back Up Now every day (preferably as soon as you
open a project and just before you close it, or whenever the mood moves you)
File > Backup Project To... allows you to create zipped backups of your
project.
Automatic Backup
Scrivener is very good at making backups of your work. As none of us want
to lose our precious creativity, it is pleasing to rely on an automatic system
rather than having to remember to make copies every day. However, backing
up to the same machine you work on day to day is a dangerous proposition. If
that machine breaks down your backup will go with it. You should be
backing up to an external drive or, if you have internet connectivity, to a
remote backup service. Dropbox works wonderfully for this - get a free
account at http://dropbox.com
You can change the period Scrivener waits to auto-save in Tools > Options >
Backup
To export an entire project with the directory structure intact, select all in the
binder and go to File > Export > Files
To see where a project is saved, click on the .scriv icon next to the project
name at the very top of the window.
See also Backup Preferences and Saving your work
GETTING SET UP
YOUR WORK ENVIRONMENT
The Binder
The Editor
The Inspector
Turning panes off
View Mode
The Toolbar
The Format Bar
The Binder
The column on the left, the Binder, is the repository of everything you create
and everything you import to store in your Projects. Think of it as a ring
binder into which you place all your working documents. It is a mini-outliner
in which you can see every document and sort them into folders which you
can have open or closed as you need.
Parts of the Binder
When you open a new Scrivener project using the Blank template, you will
see the basic Binder folders which are Draft, Research and Trash.
The Draft folder is where you write your project. You can rename this folder,
but you cannot delete it. You can create as many documents and folders and
sub-folders in here as you need and you can drag and drop them up and down
levels.
Research
The Research folder is where you store any files and documents you want for
your project. You can import almost anything into here including PDFs,
pictures, videos, sounds. Again, you can create folders and sub-folders in
here to organise your work.
You can only import documents into the Research folder.
Trash
The Trash is where everything you delete goes to. When I first started using
Scrivener I thought I had lost some work that I had deleted until the Scrivener
support pointed out that nothing gets deleted, it just all goes into Trash and
can be pulled out again easily.
If you want something back that you have deleted, look in the Trash folder in
the Binder - everything ends up in there.
The Editor
The Editor is the main writing window. When all elements in the main
Scrivener window are open it sits in the middle. Like any word processor that
you will have used before, this is where you write. That's not all you do here,
but it mostly is. You can split the Editor into two panels, either vertically or
horizontally, and then place two separate files into the different sides. This is
incredibly useful for writing up research documents, comparing files or just
tracking the endings and beginnings of the parts of your story.
The Editor also shows you various different types of listings from the Binder
such as Scrivenings and outlines.
Footbar
The Editor also has a Footbar. The contents and functionality of the Footbar
change depending on the content of the Editor
Splitting the view
You can split your writing area to see the document you are working on at the
same time as another document such as a research document or another page
of your work in progress.
Horizontal
To split the screen horizontally click the small 'split screen' icon just above
the top right of the writing area. You can also choose the menu View >
Layout > Split Horizontally or the shortcut Ctrl-+
Vertical
To split the screen vertically use the menu choice View > Layout > Split
Vertically or the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-+
Rejoining the screen
To join the screen back to one from either split, you can click the split screen
icon again, or use the menu choice View > Layout > No Split or the shortcut
Ctrl-+
Full Screen View
Full Screen View is a special Scrivener viewing method that removes all the
parts of the screen except for the writing area. If you get distracted by the
clutter around your words, this is a great way to remove the temptation. Use
View > Enter Full Screen or F11
A quick way to get to Full Screen view is to use the Full Screen button in the
Toolbar.
Hiding the Binder

You can hide just the Binder by using the menu choice View > Layout >
Hide/Show Binder. This removes the Binder column and gives you a wider
writing area. The shortcut for this is Ctrl-Shift-B
The same shortcut or menu toggle returns the Binder.
The Inspector
The Inspector is the right hand column on your screen. It has many uses and
guises and you will get used to the various powerful ways it works over time.
However, it has some basic functionality that will be immediately apparent.
Showing the Inspector
If you can't see the Inspector you can easily turn it on using the Inspector
button at the far right of the Toolbar.
Basic Inspector
The content of the Inspector will vary depending on what you choose to see.
The basic Inspector shows:
A Synopsis for the current document if you have written one.
General meta-information including any Label and Status.
Document Notes where you can add notes for the current document.
You can vary or close any or all of these parts. If you look at the bottom of
the Inspector you will see a row of six small icons. Each of these reveals
different information relating to your document.
You can hide or show the Inspector with View > Layout > Hide
Inspector/Show Inspector
More about the Inspector in Finding your way around.
Turning panes off
All of these panes, with the exception of the main writing pane, the Editor,
can be turned on and off as you require them. You don’t need to see the parts
you don’t want to see.
Turn off the Binder using View > Layout > Hide Binder (Ctrl-Shift-B)
Turn off the Inspector using View > Layout > Hide Inspector (Ctrl-Shift-I)
Turn the Toolbar off using View > Toolbar (Alt-Left Arrow)
Turn off the Format Bar using Format > Hide Format Bar (Alt-Right Arrow)
These are all toggles, so when they are off the same menu options will turn
them back on again.
All writers are expert procrastinators, we love to find things to distract us
from the difficult job of getting on with our writing. Scrivener allows you to
concentrate on the job at hand by removing distractions and I recommend
that you are ruthless with your use of these functions.
View Mode
View modes affect what you see in the Editor, where you write. The different
modes help you to organise your writing and give you different views of your
work. What you see in any of these modes varies depending on what you
have chosen in the Binder.
You choose the mode you want by using the View Mode icon in the Toolbar
or by choosing from the first options in the View menu.
There are three view modes:

Document. Document view will show you the document you are currently working on. If this
document has other documents as content, you will get a Scrivenings view, which joins all the
sub-documents together and shows them as one.
Corkboard. The Corkboard is a place where you can lay out index cards to help to plan or
organise your project. Again, you will only see index cards if you have sub-documents present.
If not, you will be presented with a blank corkboard. You can edit synopses directly onto index
cards and also drag them around to re-organise your work.
Outliner. The Outliner mode expands the layout of the Binder into the Editor and shows you
progress and other meta-information about your project. Again, you will only see an outline if
you have sub-documents in your working document. You can outline in this way from any level
in your project. Take a look at the menu option View > Outliner Columns to see that you have a
choice of outliner information that you can access through this view.
Short cuts for View Mode are:

Document Ctrl-1
Corkboard Ctrl-2
Outliner Ctrl-3
The Toolbar
The Toolbar sits along the top of the Scrivener window and contains a range
of buttons to help you quickly achieve regular tasks. You can change what's
on it, but it's probably not worth doing this until you know what you use a lot.
Check out Customising the Toolbar
Shortcut buttons are at the left side of the Toolbar
Search tools and the Inspector button at the right side of the Toolbar
View mode chooser is in the middle of the Toolbar

You can hide and reveal the Toolbar using View > Toolbar (Alt-Left
Arrow)
Scrivener offers a default set of icons in the Toolbar when you first use it.
The key buttons in the Toolbar are (from the left side):
Binder. This opens and closes the Binder.
Show Collections. Shows collections in the Binder.
Project Keywords. Opens the Keywords window.
Add. When you want to add a new file or folder use this.
Trash. A delete button for the currently selected file or folder.
Full Screen. This takes you to the Full Screen view and hides everything except for your
writing.
Compile. Use this to output your work.
In addition you will find:

View Modes chooser. This switches between Document, Corkboard and Outliner views.
Search window. Find anything anywhere in your project.
Inspector button. This turns the Inspector on or off.
You can change all the shortcut buttons in the Toolbar to your own selection
using Tools > Customise Toolbar
To add extra icons to your Toolbar, or to change what you have there
Select an object from the left hand column
Click the right arrow in the central area
Contents of your Toolbar are listed on the right.
Remove objects by selecting in the right hand column and clicking the left arrow
You can sort objects using the up and down arrows for selected objects
You can also use this pane to manage your Format Bar
The Format Bar
The Format Bar sits above the writing window and gives you access to some
basic text editing tools. Most of the tools in it will be familiar from other
word processing programs.
You can format text on the page through the Format Bar
Select the text you want to format and use the Format Bar to set (from the
left):
Font. Chooose from your available fonts for the current page.
Type
Font Size
Line Spacing and Indentation
Style - Bold, Italic, Underline
Font Alignment
Font Colour
Highlighting
Table
Bullets
You can show and hide the Format Bar with Format > Show Format
Bar/Hide Format Bar (Alt-Right Arrow)
GETTING SET UP
FILLING YOUR FOLDERS
The Base Folders
Pre-splitting a big file
Text file types
The Base Folders
The system of files and folders that Scrivener offers is about as powerful a
tool as you’ll get. If you’ve been writing using a word processor such as
word, you will probably have invented your own system of managing files
and folders. As you write more and more and your work splits into myriad
sections, sub-sections, chapters, fragments and parts, and those sections,
chapters and parts are all saved, backed up, have their names changed and
saved again, you probably reached a point where you didn’t know whether
you were coming or going. Or, like me, you’d regularly get to that moment at
three in the morning when, in a cold sweat, you’d find yourself utterly unable
to find a key, recently rewritten, section of your work. Or you couldn’t work
out which was the most recent. Or the most recent didn’t seem to contain
edits that you were utterly sure you’d made.
There are thousands of variables on this scenario, all of them horrible to
writers and all of them like a recurring nightmare. And even if you use
Scrivener only as a text editor, if you never ever use a single one of the
features that make it such a powerful tool, you will bless the day that you
moved from the primitive pond-life version of file management to the
superior alien life-form that Scrivener provides. Scrivener file management
just works.
There is an important thing to realise about the hierarchy of files and folders
that relates to formatting and compiling. See Levels
Depending on which template you open to start your project you will see
different sets of top level folders in the Binder. There are three folders (Draft,
Research, Trash) that are always present and these are known as the Root
folders.
Draft
The Draft folder is your writing area. It is akin to one big document in a word
processor, but Scrivener does not leave you on your own to create a single
huge document or to break it up as you want as you go along. Everything you
write here is part of a whole but segmented and rejoined as you wish.
You can break the contents of the Draft folder down into as many parts as
you wish and organise them in as many folders or document containers as
you need. When you Compile your output or when you view them as
Scrivenings you will see them rejoined as single document.
The Draft folder can be renamed. It is still the Draft folder in which you do
your writing. Don’t confuse it with any of the other folders you might have
created.
Research
The Research folder is where any documents that are not part of your written
work are stored. As with the Draft folder, you can create as many folders and
sub folders as you need to organise documentation. Think of this part of the
Binder as a section in your ring binder into which you can insert all the bits
and pieces that you pick up along the way.
If you have already amassed a lot of scans or someone has given you a bunch
of PDF files, you can just import them into your project and then carry on
adding to them.
If you are well organised in your life you will probably enjoy creating a
sophisticated structure in the Research folder so that everything you add is at
your fingertips. Or, if you are like me, you might find that you create an ad-
hoc structure which you have to go back to regularly to impose some sort of
order. It doesn’t matter how you approach your research (or even if you never
add any and are someone who ‘just writes’). Scrivener will accommodate
your working methods.
If you have lost track of where the document you are working on is located,
you can reveal it by using View > Reveal in Binder or Crl-Shift-8 The
document will be shown highlighted in the Binder.
The Research folder is a top level folder that is also called a Root folder
because it cannot be deleted.
It can hold non-text documents like images, videos, PDFs and web pages. See
the full listing Importing media files below.
You can rename the Research folder and create as many sub folders in it as
you need. It is your space to collect and manage as much research as you
need.
Trash
The Trash (or Bin) folder is where documents and folders go when they are
deleted. You can drag anything out of Trash and put it back into one of the
other areas of the Binder. However, you cannot edit documents while they
are in the Trash—it is not a working area.
It is very easy to import your existing files into Scrivener. Both research
documents of all types and works in progress that you want to continue to
write.
It is common, when you first start to use Scrivener, that you have partly
written works in other formats. Importing these into Scrivener is the first step
to getting up to speed with the power of Scrivener.
When you import a file into the Binder, Scrivener will transform the file into
a format that is more useful internally. However, it does not change the
original file in any way, so you can proceed and change your work as much
as you need.
Steps to importing text files
Scrivener will import almost any text file type. If you are importing a
working document, import it into the Draft top level folder.
If you by chance have a file type that is not listed below, you can easily
convert it into a format that will import. If the worst comes to the worst you
can simply copy and paste directly into a Scrivener page.
File > Import menu provides handy methods for bringing existing material
into your project binder.
The first time you import anything, you will be presented with a window with
information about the various limitations of the import feature. If you do not
wish to view this warning every time you import files, be sure to check not to
see the warning again.
Be aware that some complex file types such as Excel spreadsheets will lose
data on import.
You can import text files into the Research folder and any other folders that
you have created, but not into the Trash folder. Make sure you select the
place in the Binder where you want to import your file or you will find it
ends up in the wrong place. However, if this does happen you can just drag
and drop it to the correct location.
Any media files can only be imported into the Research folder, not into the
Draft folder.
Other file sources that can be imported using specific options in the File >
Import menu are:
Multimarkdown. You can import a Multimarkdown file into Scrivener. It will be split into
multiple files based on its structure which will be recreated in the binder. Each header found in
the MMD file will be used to create a new document at an appropriate level of depth, with any
text following that header up to the point of the next header included in that document.
Simpletext. If you use WriteRoom for the iPhone, or the SimpleText.ws service, you can login
using this utility and select from your available note files online, choosing which ones to
download into the binder.
Scrivener projects. You can import another Scrivener project into the Binder to add it to a
current project. The files of the other project will be imported into a folder entitled "Imported
Project" at the bottom of the binder, with the structure intact. Keywords and project references
are also imported, and any project notes are imported as a text document which is placed at the
top of the folder.
Index Card. If you have exported projects from Index Card to Dropbox, it is possible to drag
these files directly into the Binder to import them. Each card will be imported as a separate
document in Scrivener.
Text file types
Scrivener supports the following text types for importing:
RTFD (Rich Text Format Directory) A proprietary Apple rich text format commonly used by
Mac Cocoa applications.
RTF (Rich Text Format) The universal rich text standard; note that this is often the best format to
use for importing from word processors, as Scrivener can import footnotes, comments and
images from RTF files but not from DOC files.
DOC & DOCX (Microsoft Word format) As with TextEdit, Scrivener ignores images, footnotes
and comments in DOC files.
ODT (Open Document Text) This open format is the primary format used by OpenOffice.org,
but has broad support amongst many word processors.
TXT (plain text) Scrivener will happily import any plain text file. If you end up with a lot of
gibberish in your file it is most likely that you have imported something that is not a plain text
file. If all else fails, use copy and paste.
Files with the following extensions will be imported as text as well, .xml,
.tex, .mmd, .md and .markdown.
FDX (Final Draft 8+ format) Using the standard document format for Final Draft, you can
import scripts directly into any area of the Binder and have those imported documents converted
to Scrivener's script formatting.
Use the File > Import > Import and Split... command to automatically split
an FDX file into smaller documents, with the ability to select where splits
occur.
FCF (Final Draft 5--7 File Converter Format) A special format for conveying scripts into and out
of Final Draft. Use this format to import scripts into Scrivener if Final Draft 8 or greater is not
available.
OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) Commonly exported from outlining style
applications, this format well let you transfer an outline tree from one application to another.
.indexcard (Index Card for iPad files) If you have no need for keeping Index Card and Scrivener
synchronised, and just want to import some cards you've created, you can import an .indexcard
file straight into the Binder.
No extension. Documents with no extension get imported into Scrivener as plain text files
If you try to import an RTF or DOC file that has no extension, when you
import it into Scrivener you will see all of the raw code because it will be
imported as plain text. Make sure you add the appropriate extension before
importing to ensure that Scrivener recognises it as an word processor file.
You can import media files into the Research folder or any other folder that
you have created. Use the Edit > Insert > Image from File menu but make
sure you have selected a place in the folder where you want to import your
document to.
If you have selected a place in the Draft folder the option to import Files will
be greyed out and you will not be able to make the import. You need to use
the Research folder or another folder that you have created.
Importing a media document will create a new file in the folder that you have
chosen and the document will be displayed when you select that file.
What formats can I import?
Scrivener supports all of the main image file types
TIF
JPG
GIF
PNG
BMP
All of the main audio/visual formats

WMV
AVI
MOV
MPG
WAV
MP3
PDF
HTML
.webarchive file types
GETTING SET UP
QUICK START WITH PROJECT TEMPLATES
What is a Template
What is a Template
It is simple to start with a blank sheet of paper and build the structure that
works for you. Scrivener does offer another method of getting to the right
place quickly—Templates. You’ll find out about them as soon as you start up
Scrivener, as it comes with some built in Templates. We’ll look into them in
much more detail later. Templates, whether you use those that come with the
software or create your own, will make your life just that little bit easier.
Templates are simply projects that have been set up to get you started. They
contain some basic structure such as folders and files to get you started.
Think of them as helpful starting points, not as a structure that you have to
adopt. Generally you will end up moving everything around and changing the
rest and the Template you started with will become unrecognisable after a
short while.
Getting a Template
When you start a new Project using File > New Project ... you are offered a
range of Templates to choose from. You can see what Tempates are built in
to Scrivener from File > New Project which will show you the categories of
Template. Clicking on any one of them reveals what Templates are available
for you to try. It is worth opening up each of them and having a look at how
they are structured, even if you don't end up using any of them.
A range of Templates are offered when you open a new project.
How templates work for you
When you open a New Project template you will find your Binder already
populated to some degree, depending on what the template has in it. Some
templates contain all sorts of goodies such as character templates (yes, you
can have Page templates withing Project templates, we'll address this later)
that you fill in for each character, outline information.
Templates such as the Scriptwriting templates have the formatting necessary
for you to get started on a script without having to set up specific ways of
working. These little advantages can catapault a new project into life very
quickly.
Which Document Template you use is up to you.
Remember that whatever is in the Template when you start, you'll almost
certainly change everything as you get to grips with your writing project. So
it doesn't matter too much which Template you choose to start with. What
you want to do is choose the Template that most closely aligns to what you
are intending to do, then you won't have to spend time removing or changing
things that just don't work. If in doubt, start with the Blank Template and
build up from there. Sometimes it is easier to add things than to take them
away.
What is in the templates
The Templates each contain a varying amount of structure, settings and even
guides and useful information. Even the Blank Template isn't really empty, it
contains a basic structure.
The categories of built-in Templates are
Fiction
Non-fiction
Scriptwriting
Miscellaneous
Each of these categories contains different Templates which you can easily
check by clicking on each in turn.
In the real world, none of the Templates that come with Scrivener are going
to be precisely what you need. As you change and edit them to fit your needs,
you will realise that only you really know how you like to start a project. At
this point you might like to try making your own Template for future use. It's
a very simple process that can save hours of replicating what you've already
done when you come to start your next piece of work.
Sharing templates with friends
You could go further and create Templates to share with other writers who
are working in the same way. For example, if you are in a writers' group, you
might like to consider making a 'Jumpstart your novel' Template and sharing
it around. Or maybe for your class, your work group. If you are responsible
for the regular production of written material, you might find that distributing
Scrivener Templates is a great way to standardise production and raise
quality. Remember, you can put instructions, examples, images and even
videos or sound recordings into your Templates. Anything that you can put in
a Project you can save in a Template.
If you do make a Template that you want to save, please tell me about it and
I’ll put it on my Scrivener website at http://scrivenerwriter.com
Create your own Template
When you have a Project set up in the way you want, use File > Save As
Template. Fill out the name and choose a category and icon and save. Next
time you open up the New Project window you will see your Template listed.
Create and save your own Template for future use.
You can use any of the built in Templates as starting points for creating your
own Template. When you do this, the original Template is not changed, so
you can repeat the exercise as often as you need.
Set up a blank project with your preferred keywords, labels, font, colours, etc
and use File > Save As Template to use it as a base for new projects.
Using other people's Templates
In addition to the Templates that come with Scrivener, you might come
across Templates that have been made available by others. These are usually
made to fill a specific purpose, either to provide a good starting point for a
specific type of writing or to support a project such as tutorial or class.
Where to find Templates
A good way to find Scrivener Templates is to search on the Web. A search
terms such as 'Scrivener Template' should throw up a few places to find them.
Ivan's Template page
I keep a listing of Scrivener Templates at http://scrivenerwriter.com
How to import a Template
If you have found a Template on the Web and downloaded it, you can import
it into your Scrivener. Open the Template window using File > New Project
In the bottom left corner, click the Options button and choose Import
Templates ... Find the Template you have downloaded and import it into
Scrivener, then open it.
GETTING SET UP
MANAGING PREFERENCES
Setting Preferences
Saving Preferences
General
Appearance
Corkboard
Navigation
Editor
Auto-Corrections
Keyboard
Backup
Setting Preferences
All preferences are set from Tools > Options (F12). This opens a window
that contains 10 areas in which you can set Preferences. The defaults are
acceptable for many of these, but there are specific areas that you might want
to pay attention to.
Scrivener preferences are divided into seven categories.

Remember, writers are notorious for procrastination and many of these
settings will not advance your project by a single word. However, getting the
writing environment right will help you achieve your goals, so some attention
should be paid to these settings.
Category areas are:
General
Appearances
Corkboard
Navigation
Editor
Auto-Correction
Keyboard
Backup
You can reset all Preferences to their default settings at the bottom of the
Preferences window.
To save your preferences in order to restore them later, use the Manage...
pop-up button at the bottom of the Preferences window.
Saving Preferences
You can save the Settings you have chosen in the bottom left corner of the
Preferences window, or open settings you have previously saved.
Save and load your preferences from the Preferences window

Save your preferences for safety
Save your preferences to an external file for either backup purposes, or to
synchronise your settings between multiple computers. Preferences can be
loaded with the Load command. This replaces the current settings
completely.
Saving All Preferences as Presets
Presets are a convenience feature for organising different preference where
you need to use varied settings for different projects. It is easy to switch sets
on the fly. The name that you use to save a set will be displayed in this menu
for future reference.
If you wish to update a preset that you've made before, make any changes
you see fit, and then save the preset under the same name. You will be asked
for confirmation before the old preset file is overwritten.
Load and Save Theme Preferences
Themes save and load only partial preferences. They relate to those
preferences which control appearance, such as interface colours, corkboard
and outliner appearance. Optionally, fonts are also saved in Themes by
checking off the appropriate boxes in the Save Theme window. These are
useful when synchronising settings between computers, sharing your theme
settings with others, or loading theme settings you've downloaded from the
Internet.
Save Theme Preferences as Preset
Saving Theme preferences is similar to saving all preferences, making it
easier to store and switch between multiple theme settings without having to
manage individual files.
General
Reopen projects that were open on quit sets what you will see when you open Scrivener. You
may find it handy if Scrivener always opens the projects you've recently been working on, or you
can turn this off and have the start panel show so you can choose what you want to open.
Automatically check for updates checks for new versions of Scrivener each time you open the
software so you can always keep up to date.
Saving. Sets the interval between automatic saves. Scrivener saves so regularly that you should
never have to do a manual save. You can set this as a longer interval if 2 seconds seems a bit to
frequent.
Import/Export Options. Refine how imports are handled including whether HTML (Web page)
imports are converted to text.
Bibliography Manager
You can nominate a Bibliography Manager here and it here and it will
automatically open when you are making Bibliography entries.
Preferences only affect text formatting for new documents. For existing docs,
use Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style …
Appearance
In addition to two fairly self-explanatory options: Show subdocument counts
in binder and Alternate outliner row colors, the Appearance settings
covers three areas:
Customisable colours so you can set your own version of Scrivener
Fonts for various areas in the working environment
Each sub area of both Colors and Fonts opens up when clicked on to reveal
all the variables that can be set. If you like to set up your own style of
interface you can go a long way here to affect your daily view of
Scrivener.s
Fonts
Setting fonts for the Header Bar and the Outliner can substantially change the
look feel of Scrivener to something you are happy with.
Customisable colours
You can customise the colours of:
Views
Editor
Index Cards
QuickReference
Snapshots
Revision Colours
Target Progress Bars
Not all of these will be relevant to all of you, but a lot of people like to set
their own favourite colours for the Progress Bars. After all, what says you're
getting somewhere than seeing your progress in your favourite team's
colours! You can change the look of Scrivener quite extensively.
You'll probably need to do some experimentation with most of these to see
what works for you. Another great opportunity to procrastinate, but best
saved for when you've done your days word count.
Corkboard
If you are a Corkboard user, you will appreciate being able to set up your
index cards exactly as you want them.
Here you are setting the appearance and some workings of your index cards
on the Corkboard.
Options
Allow dropping dragged items onto cards gives you the ability to make
stacks by dragging and dropping files in the Corkboard.
Empty space double-click will: Set what happens when you double-click in
empty space. The options are Opening the parent corkboard, Creating a new
card or doing Nothing.
Appearance
Most of the Appearance choices are very obvious and reward playing with
them.
Corkboard Background. Vary the background for your corkboard by
choosing from different images (so it becomes not a corkboard, but we'll let
that go). You can also import your own image for a background or create a
custom colour.
Navigation
In the Navigation preferences you can set some rather general options. Not
much that’s worth messing with here.
Treatment of folders and files

What effect (if any) the Return key has
Setting media rewind timings
Editor
Set your page layout for the Editor here. This affects where you'll do most of
your writing. The key thing to do in the Editor tab is to set the main text
attributes, i.e. how new documents will format. Note that this won’t affect
your current documents. You can set the font, attributes, spacing, margins,
indents, tabs, colours, alignment etc of the text in the edit pane however you
wish and all new documents will be the same.
s
Other things to set here are:
Typewriter scrolling (if you like this sort of thing)
Ruler units, ruler snap and editor margins.
Default zoom setting for new documents.s
Auto-Corrections
Ices you can set spelling options,set Auto-capitalisation (the bane of my life!)
and Substitutions
Spelling
Check spelling and/or correct errors as you type
Set the Dictionary you want to use. There is a large list of Dictionaries you can download to use.
Create a Personal Word List to which you can add words of your own.
Auto-Capitalisation
Capitalise sentences automatically adds a capital letter after any period or at the start of a
paragraph.
Auto-capitalise individual ‘i’
You can get Scrivener to suggest completions of words as you type
Substitutions
Hyphens to em-dashes
Triple periods can be automatically converted to ellipses
Smart quotes can be disabled
Any 'i' can be automatically capitalised
Substitutions
You can also set up symbol and text substitution. For example, the Copyright symbol © can be
automatically generated from (c). Scrivener gives you a large set of these to start wit— you can
edit them and add your own.
s
Keyboard
All you can set in the Keyboard tab are the keyboard shortcuts. They are all
listed. You can change the Shortcut key combinations and add new
shortcuts.
Backup
The Backup preferences allow you to turn on automatic backups which will
save your work to a different location. You can also opt to back up when you
open and/or close the project.
Backups are different to Saves, which take place every few seconds. If you
opt to compress your backup files to the .zip format it will slow the process
down marginally. Set the number of recent backups that you want to save.
The default is five.
Backup preferences are set in Scrivener > Preferences > Backup
The default setup is to have automatic backups On. You can choose to:
Back up when you open a project
Back up when you close the project
Back up every time you manually save a project
Compress the automatic backups as zip files to save disk space
Date the backups as part of the file name
How many backups you keep
You also get to choose the location of the backups. This is of course the most
crucial part of setting up backups and you should think carefully about what
backup location to use.
Backup location
Finally, choose a location to save your backups to. If you use an external hard
drive or an internet based (cloud) backup service like Dropbox, this would be
the best place to set the Backups to.
For further discussion on backup strategy, see Backup First!
Exploring View Modes
Using the Inspector
FINDING YOUR WAY AROUND
EXPLORING VIEW MODES
View Modes
Corkboard view
Outline view
Full Screen Mode
Quick Access
Layouts Panel
Header Bar
Footer Bar
View Modes
Everything relates to everything else, there is a logical flow from view to
view, from Binder to Corkboard to Outline. Apart from actual writing, these
will be your most powerful allies during your writing project.
In Scrivener every document can be seen in the Binder and on the Corkboard
and in an Outline. Further, every document can be placed inside another
document (or a folder). Once a document has sub-documents, it can be
viewed as a Corkboard itself, or as an Outline.
This means that you have several different ways to view any document and
you have various ways to stack and manage your documents. In this way,
Scrivener is quite unlike any other word processor you have ever used. You’ll
find it is more like the desktop of your computer, where documents can be
place inside folders inside folders, etc, and these can be viewed in various
ways depending on what you are trying to achieve.
These abilities in Scrivener can lead to some confusion at first, and it is
probably best to go slowly when you start. Don’t create dozens of documents
with deep hierarchies or you will probably start to lose track of how to
navigate. But once you have a few sections, chapters or parts in your project,
you will find huge flexibility in the ability to play with layout and views.
Document : Corkboard : Outliner s

There are three view modes, or four including the edit mode. They are
accessed by the three icons in the centre of the top Toolbar. You can flip
between them and see what each does.
The view modes are:
Document (Scrivenings) View > Document Ctrl-1
Corkboard View > Corkboard Ctrl-2

Outliner View > Outline Ctrl-3
This is the standard edit view that you will write in (unless you are using the
expanded Composition view which hides all the other panes). Edit view
shows you a single document to work on.
Scrivening view
The same icon toggles between Scrivenings and Edit view if you have
selected a folder or container in the Binder. The Scrivenings view is unique
to Scrivener (strangely!). It shows you all the documents in the folder that
you have selected in one long document, which makes for an excellent way
to look at the bigger picture as you work. You can still edit all the documents
and headings in this view. It is really a way to reassemble all the fragments
that you have been editing one by one.
Scrivenings is a great method of taking a look at a longer chapter, part or
section of a long work. Once you have had enough of this view, you can flip
back to a single document view with the same icon, though some people do
tend to work mainly in Scrivenings.
In Scrivenings view you can see and work on all documents one after
another as if they are a single document.
To use Scrivenings view, you have to have selected a container in the Binder
that has sub files or folders as content. You can see all parts of the document
one after hte other, separated by a dotted line. You can read or edit through
the entire document as if it is one.
Corkboard view
The corkboard is one of the most powerful and most popular features of
Scrivener. It springs from a literal interpretation of a standard tool for writers
in pre-Scrivener days: the use of index cards on which to plan your writing.
A set of cards would be constructed with a short synopsis or description on
each card. These could then be endlessly shuffled around until a structure that
worked seemed to emerge. Then the writer would refer to this layout as they
wrote, the cards often blue-tacked to the wall. A wall of index cards is a
standard feature of many writers studies.
Scrivener brought this idea directly into the program, but using the power of
computing, enhanced it considerably to integrate the index cards with the
planning and organisation of the writing.
The Corkboard when showing dominates the working space. Here you
can organise part of or all of your work.
What is the Corkboard?
The Corkboard is a pane in the centre of your Scrivener working area on
which you can arrange representations of index cards. In the real world these
would be small cards that you could keep in an index file. In Scrivener they
are just another way of looking at your files or folders. Whatever is selected
in the Binder is what will show in the Corkboard. If there are folders with
content in the section you are looking at, you can double click on the relevant
card and you will drill down to the next level, which will also be shown on
the Corkboard. Only one level is displayed at a time but you can easily move
up and down the hierarchy.
Moving cards around
You can drag the cards around on the Corkboard to re-organise your work.
This will actually change the order of these items in the binder, so be careful.
Imagine you have made a card for every segment of your book and have laid
them out on the kitchen table. Move them around until they make more sense.
What are index cards
Every index card represents a document or folder. The cards give you an idea
of what is in each document, they reveal Labels and Titles of documents and
also show any Synopsis that has been written.
For more on using the Corkboard see Planning with a Corkboard
Outline view
The Outline view is one of the most useful features. It is really an alternative
to the Corkboard (or an expanded version of the Binder). I don’t use the
Corkboard much but I do use the Outliner all the time. I set up the columns
that I want to see in here and use it to get an overview of progress.
Outline view shows you everything in your working document and you
can choose what further information to view.
What you can do in the Outliner:
View all of or part of your work in one place
Drag and drop to re-order your parts
See Labels
See Word counts and targets
Check Keywords
Edit meta data
The Outliner is a great place for brainstorming the structure of your book. It
is laid out like a spreadsheet. There is more you can do in the Outliner. Check
View > Outliner Columns to see a full list of what you can show here. You
can select which columns show, i.e. What content is available in the Outliner.
For more see Outlining
Full Screen Mode
What used to be known as Full Screen Mode is now called Composition
Mode. It is a way to get rid of everything on your screen except for the words
you are writing. It’s a special interface which will blot out not only the rest of
Scrivener, but the rest of your computer as well, allowing you to concentrate
fully on the production of text. Composition mode only works for documents
and folders.
Open Composition Mode using View > Enter Full Screen (F11) or use the
Full Screen button in the Toolbar.
Full Screen button

The keyboard shortcut for Full Screen mode is F11
When Full Screen Mode is used your document has the appearance of a page
in a typewriter. Some writers find this a very relaxing way to write without
getting distracted by all the other things that your computer offers.
Exit Composition mode by using the Esc key
Menu options in full screen view
While you are in Composition Mode, you can get access to various tools by
simply moving the mouse cursor to the bottom of the screen. A menu of
options will pop up.
Options in this menu are:
Text Scale. This changes the size of the font on the screen.
Paper Position. You can alter the position of the ‘paper’ on the screen. Default option is Center.
Paper Width. Change the width of the page that you are typing on.
Keywords. Access to Keywords.
Inspector. Access to the Inspector.
Got To. Access to the Go To menu allows you to switch pages without exiting full screen mode.
Quick Access
Although it is generally easier to use the Binder or views to select and
navigate to various components in your project, there are times when this will
not be true.
The View > Go To > menu is a shortcut to files and folders in the Binder. If
you have the Binder closed, you are working in Composition mode or you are
just lost (it does happen!), then the Go To menu will help you get where you
want to get.
Sometimes the Go To menu can be faster than using traditional navigation.
Go To menu options
The menu View > GoTo provides three shortcuts for navigating within an
editing session:
Previous Document: Selects the previous item in the binder, no matter what the relative depth.
Next Document: Selects the next item in the binder, no matter what the relative depth.
Enclosing Group: Selects the parent container which the currently selected item is within; in
effect traversing up the hierarchy, much as if you had clicked on the parent container using your
mouse in the binder. The current view mode preference will be used if possible.
Text Bookmarks
See Text Bookmarks
Much like hyperlinks on the Web, you can create Scrivener links in your
work. This makes it easy to create and use a network of text-based cross-
references within your project.
It is safe to use them in the text of your work wherever you need them as they
are unique to Scrivener and do not export with your work. They can also be
used within the various notepads. They are a valuable navigation tool, or as
providing convenient uses beyond the project itself, during Compile, such as
cross-referencing that will be useful for the reader.
Adding links as you write
The creation of links can even be a good brainstorming tool, as you can build
your outline with links, while typing. Links appear much like URL links do
on the Web. Linked text turns blue and is underscored.
To make a link to another part of your project, highlight the text you want to
use as the link. Use Edit > Scrivener Link. You will see that a series of sub
menus appear, giving you accesss to all of the contents of your document.
Roll the mouse over the expanding menus until you reach the part you want
to link to. Click on this and you will create a link to that part of the document.
Customising the link colour
The link colour can be customised in Tools > Options > Appearance >
Colors > Editor. The underscore cannot be removed, so even links set to be
the same colour as the base text can be identifiable.
Layouts Panel
The layouts panel lets you save different layouts and use them again easily.
You can save layouts for use on future projects, as a shortcut to create a set
view of your project with a different screen split, Binder showing or hidden
and a different window size.
By using the Layouts panel to save different working spaces, you can switch
between these view settings quickly, without having to go through the
process of setting different parts of the screen. You can even save column
settings and other details into layouts.
What you save with a layout:
Is the Binder showing or hidden.
Are you showing the Collections tab.
Is the Inspector visible or hidden.
A horizontal or vertical split view (or none at all).
Showing or hiding the Header and Footer bars and the Ruler and Format bar.
Window size and position and view sizes.
Show or hide the Toolbar.
Full Screen status
All corkboard display settings, such as card size, ratio, and card wrapping
are also saved with the layout.
Setting up a Layout to save
Show the Layouts panel using the View > Layouts > Manage Layouts...
If you haven’t saved any layouts yet you’ll get a window with an empty list.
Click the + button and you’ll see a screenshot of your current layout on the
right side of the screen.
Choose a meaningful name for the layout that will help you find it again
when you need it. This layout is now saved for future use.
Switching to a saved layout
When you have some layouts saved, you’ll see them in the Window >
Layouts panel when you open it. Simply double click the icon next to the
layout you want to use or click the Use button.
Removing a layout
To remove a layout you no longer need, open the Layout panel, select the
layout and click the - button in the footer bar. You will be warned that once it
is deleted you'll be unable to retrieve it.
Updating a layout
To update an existing layout, select that layout in the list, and click on the
gear menu in the footer bar. Choose Update Selected Layout. A new
screenshot will be taken and the old settings will be updated to reflect the
current window layout.
Header Bar
At the top of each editor you will see the header bar which contains
navigation arrows, the title of the document and the document icon.
The left-right navigation arrows on the left allow you to navigate backwards
and forwards through the document history.
The up-down navigation arrows on the right allow you to navigate up and
down the binder hierarchy. You can use the keyboard arrow keys as a
shortcut.
Next to the navigation arrows you’ll find the title of the document and its
icon. Clicking on the document icon will display a pop-up menu with some
common menu commands.
To the far right of the header is a small icon that splits the page into two
parts. See Split Screens
Header bar status modes

The entire header bar has three colour status modes:
Plain grey is the default. This is what you will see unless you have split the editor.
Blue appears when you split the editor.
Mauve appears when the editor has been locked.
Footer Bar
At the bottom of each editor pane is the Footer Bar. The footer bar changes
depending on the type of document visible and the editor mode.
When a standard text document is being viewed, for instance, it will display
the word and character count along with a pop-up button for changing the
text scale and a button for setting document targets. In scriptwriting mode, it
will provide shortcuts for accessing various script entry macros.
Text Scale
The left hand side pop-up menu changes the scale of text.
Word count
The central part of the footer bar shows how many words and characters in
this file.
In a text document, the ‘target’ icon at the right hand side allows you to add
or edit a target number of words or characters for this file. The target icon lets
you set the word target for this document.
FINDING YOUR WAY AROUND
USING THE INSPECTOR
Meta-Data view
Notes
Reference Links
Keywords
Snapshots
USING THE INSPECTOR
The Inspector is the panel that sits to the right hand side of the main window.
It has multiple contents and can be used to access a range of information and
meta-data.
You can also hide and show the Inspector using the i icon in the header.
USING THE INSPECTOR
Meta-Data view
Meta-data
Meta-data is something that you don’t really consider very often, but you’re
glad it’s there. It is something that is added over and above to the parts of
your project to allow you to be more efficient in your work. For example,
labels and update tracking are stored as meta-data as are many other items of
information. You don’t have to know what it is, and there will always be
more meta-data than you will know about, but it helps to know where the
more useful bits are managed from. Luckily Scrivener gives us some great
access in the Inspector to fundamental meta-data. Careful management of
your meta-data adds value to your project.
General meta-data in the Inspector
In the centre of the Inspector there is a collapsable section that displays basic
meta-data and controls for editing it. The panel will always show the relevant
meta-data for the file or foder that is currently highlighted. This control area
is an excellent short cut for changing your Labels and Status as part of your
project management.
The section is headed General and you can hide it by clicking the down arrow
button to the left of the header.
The meta-data you can manage here is:

Label. A drop down menu gives you access to all the Labels that you’ve set up and the final
menu item allows you to access the edit window for all Labels.
Status. As with Labels, the Status menu allows you to change the status of the file you are
working on and also to edit your Statuses.
When last modified. Shows you when the current file was last modified. This is a drop down
menu that also gives you access to the creation date of the file.
Include in Compile. With this option you can set whether this file or folder will be included
when you compile your document for output. The default setting for this is Yes. This option is
useful to omit files of notes and other material that you don’t want to end up in the finished
document. It is a powerful setting as it overrides the Compile settings at the end of the process if
it is unchecked this part will be left out.
Page Break Before. Mark any file or folder to have a page break before it. This is useful for
Chapter starts but can also be used very effectively for other material such as images and notes
that need to be separated from preceding pages.
Compile As-Is. This setting over-rides any formatting that you might add when you come to
Compile your project for output.
USING THE INSPECTOR
There are six different Support Panes you can access in the Inspector.
Generally the support panes appear below the Synopsis, but for two of the
panes the synopsis area disappears and the pane uses the entire Inspector.
They are viewing areas of stored information: they information you store
depends on you.
Accessing the panes
The six panes can be accessed at any time by clicking on the icons in the
bottom of the inspector.
Notes: References: Keywords: Snapshots

The panes give you access to:
Document Notes
Reference Links
Keywords
Text Snapshots
Locking the Inspector

You can lock the Inspector using the padlock icon to the right of the pane
icons at the foot of the Inspector. Locking keeps the Inspector contents as
they are when you open a different document in a split screen. Locking is
very useful when you are referencing research documents but want to keep
your eye on your current text.
USING THE INSPECTOR
Notes
There are several different ways to add notes to your work as you go along.
You can make notes across all your projects using the Scratchpad
You can add Project Notes across all projects in Project Notes
You can make notes available with a specific document (see Document Notes)
You can add comments and footnotes at specific places in the text (see Inline Annotations and
Footnotes)
See Notepads and Bookmarks in Writing and Editing for a full description of
all note options.
USING THE INSPECTOR
Reference Links
You can add links both inside your Scrivener document and outside it to the
Web. The types of link you can add using the Document References panel in
the Inspector are:
Add Internal Referencess
Look up and Add External References
Create External References
What are these links useful for? As you can create links within your project,
links to documents stored on your computer and links to the web, you have a
lot of flexibility here. Reference links are a good place to create specific links
that you need repeated access to while writing. You can also create a sort of
min reference library within the document by making a list of Project
references.
In the Inspector Document References are listed

Project and Document Links
You have the option to make ‘local’ Document links and ‘universal’ Project
links. As with Notes, you can switch between Document and Project
references using the drop-down header of the panel.
An Internal Reference is a link to the current Scrivener project, that is, a link
internally to what you are working on. These sort of links are wonderful for
creating references that you can access while you are working in your
document. You can link to anything in the Binder including your research
documents, images and anything else that you might need to work with. This
is a great way to keep track of imported reference documents.
Using the + button to the right of the panel heading, you can drop down a
menu. Choosing Add Internal Reference from this menu will open up a
descending menu option from which you can drill down to any document in
the Binder. Choosing the document creates a new entry in the Reference list.
When you double click on the icon of an Internal Link the chosen document
will open up in a split screen.
Remember, you can close a split screen with Ctrl-’
Making ‘Look up and Add’ External References
An External Reference is a link to a document stored on your computer.
Right clicking on an external reference will get you a choice of methods of
opening the file.
Create External References
You can also add an External Reference manually by writing or pasting in the
address of the resource. Usually this will be a web address. Copy an URL
from your browser and paste it into the URL column after creating a new
external reference entry.
You an also edit the name of the entry, as you can with any listing in the
pane.
Removing links
You can remove links merely by clicking on the minus sign in the header
while they are highlighted.
USING THE INSPECTOR
Keywords
If you are using Keywords to help track parts of your writing project, you can
easily add them into the Keywords pane of the Inspector. Keywords can be
added manually directly into the pane or by dragging a highlighted word or
phrase into the pane.
To be efficient with Keywords you need to be fairly disciplined and
remember to add them to each fragment of the project. Once added they
become very valuable for sorting and managing your project.
Set up a blank project with your preferred keywords, labels etc and use File >
Save As Template to use it as a base for new projects.
Manually adding Keywords
With the Keywords pane open in the Inspector, simply click the + sign in the
header and type the Keyword you want to add directly into the listing. It is
better to use the same keywords repeatedly in your project. Keywords are
used to mark places in the text, they are applied to documents. Once they
have been applied, you can find the documents they apply to.
This brings up the existing list from which you can select any word or phrase
which will then be added to the list.
Keyword Listing
You can also open the entire Keyword Listing window using Project > Show
Project Keywords which brings up the Keywords Panel (or with the shortcut
Ctrl-Shift-O)
The Keywords Panel allows you to organise keywords and drag them onto
documents to assign them.
USING THE INSPECTOR
Snapshots
See Snapshots
Planning with a Corkboard
Outlining
The Synopsis
PLANNING YOUR PROJECT
PLANNING WITH A CORKBOARD
The Corkboard
Corkboard Settings
Index Cards
The Corkboard
The Corkboard is a representation of all the contents of the Binder. It is there
for you to cover in Index Cards and to reorganise at will, much as you would
a physical corkboard on the wall. Some of you will never use this feature,
others will find it the most valuable thing in Scrivener. Most of us will fall
somewhere in the middle.
Switch to the Corkboard using the View Mode option:
Moving items around in the Corkboard will change the actual order of those
items in the binder. This gives you a quick tool for re-arranging your work
and enables you to affect changes upon the ordering of that book with simple
drag and drop.
Allow dropping dragged items onto cards
If you enable drop-ons in Tools > Options > Corkboard, you will also be
able to stack cards with other cards by dropping them onto each other, just as
you would drop items onto a folder.
Corkboard Settings
There are several settings you can adjust to make your cards fit with your
worldview. You can access these settings in Corkboard mode from the right
hand side of the Corkboard footer.
Quick access to some of the settings comes in the footer.

Size
There are two ways of arranging index cards. One is to set the size of the
cards—the corkboard will then wrap the cards depending on how much space
is available. The other is to specify how many cards you want to see and let
Scrivener resize the cards to fit the space.
Ratio
You can set the ratio of each card. By default it is set to 3 x 5 to emulate real
index cards, but you can create tall or long wide cards to fit with your way of
working and the way you see the world.
Spacing
Alter the amount of space available between each card vertically and
horizontally.
Cards Across
Specify how many cards you want to see or let Scrivener decide how many
fit by using Auto.
The Corkboard Options pop-up contains settings which are specific to each
project. Changes made to this pane will only impact the active project they
have been made in, letting you have two entirely different visual appearances
for each major work. Any changes made will be saved with the project.
You can set other preferences in Tools > Options > Corkboard
Index Cards
Basic parts of the card
The title is simply what you would expect: it is an editable name of the item
as it appears in the binder, or in the header bar when you are editing it or
view its corkboard. The title is also often used by the compiler if it has been
set up to consider it, but we'll come back to that in a later section.
The synopsis is meant to be a brief encapsulation of what the document's
purpose is, but you can use it for whatever you like. Some people use it to
keep track of the things they need yet to do, others keep highly visible notes
about what they've written so far, and some don't even fill them in at all just
leaving them blank or using Scrivener's automatic generation tools to form a
synopsis from the first few lines of text.
Whatever you end up using them for, it is important to realise that they are
separate from the actual text of the document, and in most cases what you
type into them will not appear in the final book. Use this to your advantage.
To edit either the title or the synopsis on a card, double-click in the text field
you wish to edit. Once editing, you can use Tab and Shift-Tab to navigate
forwards and backwards between cards and their two editable fields, much
like you would in a spreadsheet.
To terminate editing, press the Enter key at any time.
The Card itself
There are seven parts to an index card but you will probably not see all of
them at one time, depending on your preference settings. At its most minimal,
you'll only see the icon, title, and synopsis, the three core elements that
cannot be removed, all other items must be enabled in the View >
Corkboard menu.
All of the options you select for corkboard appearance and label tinting will
be saved into the project. If you prefer a certain look by default, consider
creating your own custom starter template.
Document location number. These can be turned on or off in View > Corkboard Options >
Show Card Numbers
Title of the document
Synopsis of the document. See Synopsis.
Colour label (colour swatch in top-right corner).
Status stamp (diagonal text stamped across the middle), this will show if a Status has been set
for the file.
It is possible to tint the colour of a card based on its label using View > Use
Label Color In > Index Cards
OUTLINING
Managing Columns
OUTLINING
The Outliner gives you another view of your project. Although it contains the
same basic information as the Binder and the Corkboard, it offers a way to
get a quick overview of the entire project (or any part of it) and to compare
the information that you want to see.
The Outliner presents your work in the same way as a spreadsheet would if
you filled out all the data from your project, but the great thing with
Scrivener is that it fills out all the cells for you.
You can also brainstorm in the Outliner, you might find this more conducive
to your work than the Binder or the Corkboard - or you might like to combine
two or more as you proceed.
The Outliner with a default set of columns showing
You can show the Synopsis in the Title column using the Show Synopsis
button in the Outliner footer.
Meta-data that you also see in the Inspector or that you can add in the Binder
is plainly visible in the Outliner. Status, Labels, Word targets and other
information can be viewed against each chapter and edited at will.
You can view only the detail of your project that you want to work on, and
expand or collapse it by clicking on the small arrow to the left of any title.
When viewing an outliner with only text documents, you may not see any
arrows. All items can be expanded completely with View > Outline >
Expand All or all items can be completely closed with View > Outline >
Collapse All.
Most columns that allow you to edit their data will provide controls for doing
so.
Clicking on any column that has a drop down menu in it will give you the option to make a
selection from that menu. Examples are the Status and Label columns.
Change text in any column by double-clicking into the field to edit it and then pressing Enter to
confirm changes.
Checkboxes: an example, Page Break Before will present a checkbox that you can click to add a
page break before that document when exporting.
OUTLINING
Managing Columns
There are many more columns in the Outliner that you can add to the default
set that you see initially. In addition, you can create your own special meta-
data columns and add these as well. Some columns relate to eachother. For
example, Word Targets and Progress Bars.
A novel using Outliner columns to reveal Status, Targets and Progress.

To add or remove columns from the display use the View > Outliner
Columns menu and, assuming you are in the Outliner, you will see a drop
down menu of all available columns. Those with a tick by the name are
already selected for the Outliner. Just select any more that you want to add
one by one.
To change the order in which the columns are displayed, drag and drop the
column header to the desired location. You can resize the column width by
moving your mouse between column header titles until the cursor changes to
a double-pointed arrow, then click and drag to increase or decrease the width
of the column.
Title
Label
Status
Created Date
Modified Date
Include in Compile
Page Break Before
Compile As-Is
These columns all relate to meta-data that can be set in the Binder or in the
Inspector.
Target. Set a numeric target for this document.
Target Type. Words or Characters.
Progress. A tracking bar that shows how close you are to your target for this particular section.
THE SYNOPSIS
Adding a synopsis
THE SYNOPSIS
Adding a synopsis
One of the most powerful tools in Scrivener is the ability to write a synopsis
for every single fragment of your work. Whether you use these as notes to
help you make progress, or as notes to remind you what you have already
written, these Synopses can be central to making progress with a long piece
of writing.
Some people like to work in a top-down fashion, building an outline and then
making a few notes of what you intend for each section. These short notes are
called a Synopsis. In Scrivener you can create a synopsis for every part of
your project, or for none at all. Adding synopsis to your work gives you a
very useful tool as the work progresses. If you are a forward planner, you can
create an outline of your entire project synopsis by synopsis. If you do this,
you can use these as an overview of the entire work. If you are a seat of the
pants writer, you might like to add a synopsis to each part as you write it.
Then, they will act as a reminder of what has happened in each part of the
work.
You can compile a version of the project with just part headings and
synopses. This sort of output can be very useful for those of us who have to
sell projects, convince colleagues or provide evidence of where we are
getting to with our work.
There are three different ways to add a Synopsis. You can add a synopsis to a
file or folder at any point, either when you make it or later on.
Adding a synopsis to an index card
When you first create folders Scrivener will automatically create an Index
card in the Corkboard. The cards will have the title of the document you
created but the rest will be blank. They are waiting for you to add a synopsis.
Double-click in the empty ruled text area on the card and type in a short
synopsis for this chapter of the book. When finished, pressed Enter to
confirm and you will see your synopsis displayed on the card.
Your text will appear on each card as you type it. Think of these as
record cards that you can flip through to find what you need.
Adding a synopsis in the Inspector
You can also use the Inspector to add a synopsis. The top part of the default
Inspector panel is headed Synopsis. Anything you type into this panel will be
added to the index card for this file and stored as your synopsis.
Converting existing text to a synopsis
If you have already started writing, you can easily convert the first part of this
into a synopsis—this makes it easy to quickly add several synopses when you
have already part written your work.
Use the button on the far right of the Synopsis header bar to import part of
any existing text as a synopsis.
THE SYNOPSIS
Once you have added a synopsis for each part of your project you have
created a tool that can be used in many circumstances. It is easy to output
an outline using section titles and synopses. This becomes a remarkable
tool for submitting to outsiders who need for any reason to see your plan.
See Compiling
Writing and Editing
Keeping tabs on things
Notepads and bookmarks
Great Tools
Formatting
WRITING AND EDITING
KEEPING TABS ON THINGS
Finding stuff
Search
Find by Formatting
Keywords
Finding stuff
I don’t know about you, but as soon as any writing project of mine gets above
about fifty pages I start to lose things in the text. I know that I’ve written
about something or that I’ve used a great quote, but I just can’t put my finger
on where it is. Sure, you can always search on what you remember writing,
but there must be a better way.
Scrivener offers a bunch of tools that, taken together, give you complete
memory recall of your project and allow you to not only search out specific
parts of text, but to create quick access collections and sets that you can use
for various purposes.
There are various Find tools under the Edit > Find menu.
Find in Document
This tool enables you to search back and forth through the current document
or documents, but not the entire project (see Find in Project below).
Use the shortcuts F3 to Find Next and Shift-F3 to find the previous
Find and Replace

The Find window also offers a Find and Replace option that can be applied to
the entire document or to selected text. There is also a Replace All option.
Find in Project
To search the entire project use Edit > Find > Project Search.
Collections
You can add any document to a Collection using Documents > Add To
Collection. Either create a general Collection for bookmarking documents or
create multiple Collections for different purposes. Viewing the Collection in
the Binder effectively creates a subset of your entire project to scroll through.
See Collections
Find in Binder
It is quite easy to lose the connection between the document that you are
looking at in the Edit pane and its place in the Binder. You can use View >
Reveal in Binder to find out where any document you are working on lives.
The document will be highlighted in the Binder.
Shortcut for Find in Binder is Ctrl-Shift-8
Bookmarks
See Bookmarks
Search
Search
The Search tool in the Toolbar offers a straightforward search option. When
you use this form to search on a term you will see the Binder change to show
all instances of your search term in your project. Clicking on any result in the
Binder will show you that page in your project. You can return to the
standard Binder by clearing the search term from the form using either the x
in the search form or in the footer of the Binder pane.
Search Options
Clicking on the magnifying glass icon in the search form drops down a menu
of options for search.
Narrowing Search
You can choose to search everywhere, or limit your search to specific areas
of your project such as the Title, Notes, Synopsis, Keywords etc.
You can set what is searched on, e.g. the exact phrase; All words in the
phrase; any word in the phrase.
Thirdly, you can set what parts of the Project are searched, e.g. Manuscript
(Draft) only, selected part of Binder etc.
Making a Collection from a Search
You can save this Search as a Collection by using the Save Search ... option
at the bottom of the menu.
See Collections.
Find by Formatting
You can search your document to find any formatted text. You can search on
a range of style types in Edit > Find > Find by Formatting (Ctrl-F3)
The available searches are:

Highlighted Text
Comments & Footnotes
Inline Annotations
Inline Footnotes
Revision Color
Colored Text
Links
Text with Preserved Style
Character Format
Keywords
You can attach Keywords to any document and use those keywords to locate
the document or to group documents with the same theme. You can search on
a Keyword and list all documents that contain that keywords even if they are
not part of the text.
Each document can have a list of keywords associated with it. This is useful
for making documents easily searchable---for instance, you could list all
characters and locations connected with a scene in the keywords even if they
are not mentioned explicitly in the text. Creative uses for keywords could
include extended status control, plot management, character names, locations,
themes, or anything else that you want to track through your work.
There are two places where you can see Keywords. In the Inspector
Keywords pane you can see all Keywords that you’ve assigned to the
currently active document or Scrivenings. In the Keywords Window you can
see all the Keywords for your entire project. Like labels, keywords have an
associated colour which will be displayed beside the keyword in the Inspector
list and in the Keywords window.
Keyword Window
The Keywords Panel lists all of the keywords in use by the project. Open the
panel using Project > Show Project Keywords
Open the Keyword Panel with Ctrl-Shift-O
You can make new keywords by clicking on one of the buttons at the bottom
of the panel. The left-most button creates a new keyword as a sibling of the
selected keyword, and the one next to it creates a new keyword as a child of
the selection. Don’t worry too much about the difference between sibling and
child keywords - they don’t make any difference in using them. The third
button deletes the selected keyword(s).
Keywords are automatically sorted alphabetically. If you enter new keywords
into the Inspector they will be added automatically to the central project list
in the Panel. To change the order of the keywords, drag and drop them in this
table.
Adding Keywords to a document
There are several ways to add new keywords to your document:
Drag keywords from the Keywords Window to keywords table in the inspector. This is a good
method for keeping to a standard set of Keywords.
Drag the keywords from the Keywords Window to the document header bar.
Drag the keyword from the Keywords Window to a document or documents in the binder. This
allows you assign keywords to many selected documents in one go.
Keywords can be unassigned from a document by selecting them in the

keywords table and clicking the - (minus) button.
Keywords in the Inspector
Click the + button in the Keywords Inspector header to type in a new keyword. If the keyword
already exists, auto-completion will be used to help you with data entry. You can also use the
Enter key in the table to add new keywords
Using the gear menu in the Keywords Inspector header gives access to the list of all existing
Keywords from which you can choose words to add.
Right-click anywhere in the Keywords Inspector itself for quick access to this menu, as well.
Searching on Keywords
Use the Keyword window to search for documents containing any keyword. Highlight a
keyword in the window and then click the Search button. All documents containing that keyword
will be listed in the Binder.
Use the search form in the toolbar by clicking on the magnifying glass icon and selecting
Keywords from the drop down menu. Type the keyword you want to search for.
WRITING AND EDITING
NOTEPADS AND BOOKMARKS
Scratchpad
Scrivener offers a variety of ways to make notes as you go along—possibly
too many ways. It is easy to get confused between these different note
formats. My suggestion? Pick one method and stick with it.
There is a hierarchy of note options.
You can make notes across all your projects in the Scratch Pad.
You can make notes available with a specific document using Document
Notes. Document Notes is part of the Inspector.
You can add comments and footnotes at specific places in the text using
Inline Notes and Footnotes or Inspector Comments and Footnotes.
To make notes as you write you can use Notes in the Inspector.
You can add both Document Notes and Project Notes in the Inspector.
Document Notes are specific to the currently open document
Project Notes are available throughout the Project.
Document Notes
This allows you to add a note to any document while you are working on it.
You can quickly add any thoughts and references but you have to load the
specific document to see these notes. The upside of this is that you will
always see notes you have added as you cycle through your documents when
you have the Notes pane visible.
Add notes about your work in the Inspector by selecting the Notes button and
then choosing between Document Notes and Project Notes in the pane
header.
Project notes
Project Notes are available from anywhere in the project and as such are
useful for more general thoughts and ideas. See Project Notes
You can add notes and footnotes directly into the text where they remain
visible.
To add an inline note, select the appropriate text and use Format > Inline
Annotation. The selected text will be marked as circled red text. You can
also just choose Inline Annotation and then start typing - the subesquent text
will be marked.
To add an inline Footnote, select the appropriate text and use Format >
Inline Footnote. You can also choose this option and then just start typing
your footnote. Footnotes are circled and highlighted in grey.
To turn off the annotations and footnotes simply select the marked text and
then the relevant menu option. This will toggle the markings off.
Add an Inline Annotation using Ctrl-Shift-A
Add an Inline Footnote using Ctrl-Shift-F
You can convert Annotations and Footnotes from one type to another using
Format > Convert >
Simply select the original form and choose the appropriate conversion option.
The conversion options are:
Footnotes to Annotations
Annotations to Footnotes
Scratch Pad
There is a floating Scratchpad that you can use from any Scrivener project to
make notes. Show the Scratchpad using Tools > Scratch Pad
You can send different scratchpads to different projects using the drop down
menu at the bottom of the window. Either attach them to existing documents
in the project or import them as an entirely new sub-document.
Shortcut to the Scratch Pad is Ctrl-Shift-/
WRITING AND EDITING
GREAT TOOLS
GREAT TOOLS
Full Screen mode strips away everything except your writing page. For those
of you who complain that Scrivener is too distracting or who find it hard to
focus on the job in hand, here’s a solution.
Click the Full Screen button in the Toolbar and the world goes, leaving a
pristine writing space. There isn’t much to say about such a simple yet
effective tool.
When you first enter Full Screen mode, you will see your document in the
middle of the screen set to a warm-grey paper colour, and masking the rest of
the screen, a black background.
Scrivenings in Composition mode
If you are viewing a group of documents in Scrivenings mode, then
composition mode will use that same view. This is the easiest way to load an
entire container's text into composition mode, as it requires no further
selection.
Control Strip
The Control Strip pops up if you slide the mouse pointer down to the bottom
of the screen and let it sit for a moment. So long as the mouse remains within
the control strip, it will stay visible. Once moved back up, it will disappear
out of view.
The control strip contains:

Text Scale
Paper Position
Paper Width
Keywords button
Inspector button
Go To button
Word count
Background fade control
GREAT TOOLS
You can split the writing window into two parts either vertically or
horizontally. Split window view gives you the ability to look at one document
while you write into another. You can put any document into a split window
including imported texts, images and web pages. This allows you to reference
your research as you write or to read one part of your book while you work
on another.
Using a split window also makes it easy to edit or refer to other parts of the
same long document without scrolling back and forth all the time. A split
window even allows you to play media in the second split while recording
notes or transcribing it as it plays. You can even mix Corkboard, Outliner,
and Scrivening sessions together.
The writing window can be split two ways: horizontal or vertical using the
View > Layout > Split Horizontally/Vertically menu. Unsplit the window
using View > Layout > No Split. You can easily switch between the
different views.
Horizontal split: Vertical split
You can also switch to a vertical or horizontal split by using the Split icon to
the right of the header bar. This icon offers the most recently used split
option.
Ctrl-+ splits the window horizontally

Ctrl-Shift-+ splits the window vertically
Cmd-’ removes any split
When the editor has been split, one side is active at any time. To make a side
active, click the cursor into it. The active side will be where any new
document or file is loaded so it is important to be aware of which is active
when you open new documents.
A header bar and footer bar will be created for each split. This means that
each side has its own history queue, view modes, zoom settings, outliner
columns and so on. Everything that you can do to a single editor window can
be done to a split window, and those changes will be remembered for that
side of the split.
GREAT TOOLS
Find
Find anything in your document using Edit > Find >
Spell check
Run spellcheck using Tools > Spelling > This will check unknown words
from where the cursor is inserted.
Looking up words
You can search on any word while working. Highlight the word you want to
check and use Tools > Writing Tools > Look Up in Google Definitions.
This opens a window in which you can also make a standard Google search
on the term or check it in Wikipedia.
GREAT TOOLS
If you need names for your characters, Scrivener comes with a name
generator that will give you huge lists of names to choose from in the
twinkling of an eye. The name database includes many thousands of common
names, as well as selections such as dictionary words that sounds like names,
literary names from classics, a broad selection of regional names in several
languages, and can even attempt alliterative names---all with extensive
options for setting relative obscurity, naming styles such as double-barrelled
surnames, initials, and so on.
Use Tools > Writing Tools > Name Generator... to open the Name
Generator window.
Random name generation
The basic name generator gives you th ability to generate as many variations
as you need. You can set a range of options: female or male names; origin of
names; letter to start first and last names with. This should give you a good
start in coming up with sufficient names for your project. When you see
interesting names you can save them to a shortlist.
The Firstname Meanings tab gives you a list of meanings for names.
You can import your own lists of names, either first or last names. You need
to generate a delimited list - any spreadsheet or database will be able to do
this or you can manually create one. Use the Import tab to upload your names
file.
WRITING AND EDITING
FORMATTING
Style sheets
Formatting Bar
Convert options
FORMATTING
There is a relationship between formatting in Scrivener and the way your
compiled document will look - if you want it.
On the other hand, Scrivener isn’t really a design or layout program, so it is
usually better to make as basic a document as you can and format it on or
after output.
That said, it is possible to do a fair amount of formatting in Scrivener and to
export it for the next stage. But to achieve this you really need to do a bit of
forward planning.
For example, this book is written in Scrivener. It’s formatted in Scrivener and
exported to electronic book while retaining the formatting. I have to admit I
didn’t quite start out knowing how it was going to work out (the book itself
didn’t start out as a self-publish project), but once I’d realised what I wanted
to achieve I constructed a minimalist set of Preset formatting and religiously
applied them throughout the book. Once I worked out how to use the
available tools it became quite straightforward.
You’ll need to read this section along with the Compiling section and bear
both in mind.
Formatting is one of those things where Scrivener works differently to every
word processor you’ve ever used. The first thing to realise is that this is not a
word processor. Well, it processes words, but it is more of a machine for
generating work than for making it look lovely.
The standard advice is to write your work in Scrivener and then export it to
Word or your processor of choice and then format it there. And that’s good
advice, so long as you understand a few things before you get to that point.
Keeping your formatting in output
However much formatting you include as you go along, you can override all
of it when you come to output. The choice is yours.
The Override Text and Notes Formatting turns on and off formatting that you
have set as you go along.
If you check this box when Compiling in File > Compile... > Formatting
your output will use the rules set here. If you do not check this box all your
formatting will remain in your output.
See Override Texts and Notes for full details.

FORMATTING
Style sheets
Style sheets
Firstly, and most contentiously, Scrivener has no concept of style sheets. That
means that, while you can set styles, you can’t make universal changes to the
document and you can’t export a document to Word with styles embedded.
There are good reasons for this situation and Scrivener have explained them
at length, but it is one of the things that newcomers to the program find
hardest to grasp.
It’s all very well telling us that we just can’t tinker with the universal look of
our document in Scrivener, but it doesn’t help. We want to change things as
the work develops. It’s in our nature and we’re used to it. Now, my view is
that there is so much in Scrivener to compensate for this lack that we can get
around it. And a bit of forward planning, or at least understanding, will get us
a long way.
So let’s first look at what tools we DO have for formatting in Scrivener.
FORMATTING
Preferences for new documents

You can set a standard for all new documents in Tools > Options… >
Formatting. Setting these will not change your existing documents.
Use the formatting settings along the top of the pane to create a default
format for all new documents.
Converting text to default styles

Preferences only affect text formatting for new documents. For existing docs
after you have changed the default settings, use Documents > Convert >
Formatting to Default Text Style
FORMATTING
Formatting Bar
The Format Bar provides quick access to common formatting features and
also to the Presets in a drop down menu. The margins and tab spacings are
also set here.
Alt-Right Arrow shows/hides the Format Bar

The ruler and tab spacing settings are revealed and hidden using Ctrl-Shift-R
The first three drop-downs control the font and font size and style.
The next button lets you select from all of the available font families installed
on your computer. Select the precise text you want to apply the font settings
to.
The next section toggles bold, italic and underscore on and off. Again, select
the exact text you want to apply these settings to.
The next section controls paragraph-level text alignment: left, right, centre
and justify. Insert the cursor anywhere in the paragraph you want to apply
these to.
You can colour text or add highlighting with the next section.
The next button of the Format Bar allows the insertion of Tables.
The final button of the Format Bar auto-formats types of list.
FORMATTING
Convert options
There is a range of options to convert existing text to a different style or
format.
Select the text you want to convert and choose an option from Format >
Convert >
The options are to convert to:
Uppercase
Lowercase
Title Case
Quotes to Smart Quotes
Quotes to Straight Quotes

Multiple Spaces to Space
Footnotes to Annotations
Annotations to Footnotes
Working with Files
Counting your progress
Collections
MANAGING YOUR WRITING
WORKING WITH FILES
All about files
Adding new files
Levels
WORKING WITH FILES
All about files
The importance of how your file structure is set up will become clear when
you come to Compile your document. The ability to automate formatting
for different levels of your work will depend on an orderly structure and an
understanding of how levels affect compiled output.
Files in Scrivener can get a bit confusing. Because we are used to files
from other programs and from our computer desktops, we expect them to
be a certain thing and to behave in a certain way. But in Scrivener the
concept of a file and a folder is fluid. They can turn into each other either
by choice or by your actions. There is also a cousin to files and folders -
the document stack.
Scrivener lets you work the way you find most comfortable. There is no
need to build out a strict outline if you've always worked text-first, but if
you like to work in outlines, or use the snowflake model of expansion, you
can accomplish these with ease. An outline can literally emerge out of your
book, or the book can be built onto an outline. It's all up to you and how
you work best.
Files and folders are more or less the same thing in Scrivener. Each can be
a container with sub documents or folders. I find it best not to worry about
which is which. More important is the hierarchy - and this only comes into
its own when compiling.
Perhaps you can better see why it is a good idea to think of the binder as
an outliner, instead of a glorified desktop. What is all of this flexibility
good for? You don't have to be thinking in terms of constrictive structural
elements as you flesh out the skeleton for your book. You can just add
items as you go, building out new corkboards, and changing things to
folders or back to files once a structure begins to emerge.
Files
Any file can be dragged and dropped in the Binder, Outliner or Corkboard.
There are variations on this ability, but you will quickly find out what
works for you.
Files can be dropped ‘into’ other files or into folders to create a
hierarchical structure. This is one of the most powerful features of
Scrivener and it allows the reorganisation of large writing projects or plans
as quickly as you want.
Folders
In Scrivener, the concept of a Folder is fluid. It's an important concept to
grasp, because organising your book will inevitably mean a hierarchy of
documents, and wherever that hierarchy takes you it will take so in the
form of folders, or their cousins, the document stack. The concept of
hierarchy is important, because it means you can keep the parts of the
book you aren't currently working on tucked away, and that means you can
feel free to break things down as far as you want, no matter how many
hundreds of items you make in the binder, if you sort things into folders
(or file groups!) you can always keep the clutter at bay.
Document Stack
When an item has other items beneath it, but it is a file, it is often referred
to as a document stack, or a file group, but fundamentally it can act just
like a folder does. This documentation will often refer to either folders or
file groups as "containers", when the distinction does not matter.
WORKING WITH FILES
Adding new files
It doesn’t matter how many parts you split your work into, you will never
lose any of them or forget they exist. Scrivener gives you tools to track all the
parts of your work, and to rejoin them easily when you need to see your
project as one or to export it.
One of the most powerful features of Scrivener is the ability to break your
work up into text fragments that suit you, whether this is entire chapters or
down into tiny fragments of the story. I find that I make a break when it
seems natural and then use a system of Labels and Status to keep an overview
of what is going on in my work. If the parts don’t make sense, I rejoin them
into larger parts.
Add a new file
The most straightforward way to add new files and folders is from the the
Add button in the Toolbar to create a new text at any point. It will make the
new file in the Binder below where you are working. Name the text after
creating it. Holding down on the button gives you the option to create either a
New Text (file) or a New Folder.
Adding files and folders in the Binder

Use the Project > New Text or > New Folder menu optionss to create new
texts and folders.
Shortcuts are Ctrl-N for a new file and Ctrl-Shift-N for a new folder.
Splitting an existing text to create a new one
One of the most effective tools in Scrivener, once you get used to using it, is
the ability to create a new text file in the Binder at any point while you are
writing. You just Split the document you are working on and continue to
write in the new text file. The document will be ‘split’ at the cursor. You can
also select some text in your current document and split at that point, using
the selected text as the title of your new file.
Use Documents > Split > at Selection (Ctrl-K) to create a new text.
Use Documents > Split > with Selection as Title (Ctrl-Shift-K) if you want
to use selected text as the name for your new file.
Shortcuts are Ctrl-K for a new text and Ctrl-Shift-K to use the selected text
as the title
WORKING WITH FILES
Levels
In the Binder you will soon notice that the files and folders take on a
hierarchical appearance. When you drop one thing onto another, it goes
inside and creates another level down. We are all familiar with this from our
own computers. Any file or folder inside another indents by a level. Double
clicking on any folder opens it up, revealing the contents. These simple and
well known tools give us a great visual management tool, and Scrivener
offers us several ways to manage this beautifully.
But, it is important to understand at this point that there is another use for this
indenting and it’s a bit more complicated and bothersome than just putting
files in folders.
Levels in the hierarchy

ce
To export files and folders from the binder as individual files and folders on
your system, select the files you wish to export in the binder and then choose
File > Export > Files ... This will by default also export any descendants of
the selected items as well. This way you can select an entire chapter and
export all of its section files at once.
See Exporting
See Compiling
WORKING WITH FILES
When you move a file around in the Binder by dragging and dropping it is
often quite hard to keep it in a higher level. When dropped files tend to find a
folder or other file to get inside of. You can use Documents > Move To >
Left/Right/Up/Down to get the file to where you want it. Another neat
solution is to add a Left (and Right) button to the Toolbar.
COUNTING YOUR PROGRESS
Current word count
Page statistics
Project statistics
Current word count
The edit pane of Scrivener shows you the Word and Character counts for the
file you are currently editing in the middle of the footer of the page.
To set a target for the document you are working on, click the target icon in
the right hand side of the footer to open the Document Target window.
Page statistics
I call this Page statistics, though it is correctly Text statistics. It refers to the
document you are currently working on. It is similar but different to Project
Statistics.
You can quickly check a range of statistics on your text production while you
are working. Highlight the files you want to check in the Binder and select
Project > Text Statistics. This option will only be available if the cursor is
inserted in the edit pane.
A statistics window will open.
This window shows your word, character, paragraph and line count. It can
also show the word frequency if you open the Word Frequency part of the
window. When using Scrivenings mode, the full word count will be
tabulated, not just the section you are currently editing.
Note that you are looking at the totals for the files you have selected in the
Binder so be careful to select only what you intend.
Scrivener uses what is set to Compile, so be careful that you are not set only
to compile Synopses which would give a badly inaccurate count. Use File >
Compile and check the Format As: menu to ensure it is not set on a
Synopses or Outline option.
Project statistics
Project statistics refer to the entire work, although the exact contents can be
finessed in the Options window (see below). This menu at Project > Project
Statistics just gives you an overview of how the project is going including
the total words, characters (I never understood what the use of this could be)
and a page count. If you highlight text on the page it will give you the same
information on this as well.
Switching to the Options view gives you the ability to change how the
statistics are calculated.
Page count
An important setting in the Options tab is the number of words (or characters)
to count for each paperback page. It defaults to 350 but you may want to
change it to get a more accurate page count.
Targets and tracking are very important in getting through an extended
project in a regular fashion. Knowing where you are in the work and how far
or close you are from your destination can keep the most protracted writing
project on track.
You can set a word count target for the entire project and also a Session
target and keep track of these using the Project > Project Targets (Ctrl-+)
menu option. This window can be kept open, floating above your work area,
if you wish.
The Manuscript Target tracks your wordcount for the entire project. You can
choose to only include documents marked for Compile if you have set up
your Compile options.
The Session Target tracks your work in your current session.
You can edit the targets for both of these in the window and you can also
track Characters if you so wish.s
You can add word or character counts directly into any page in your project.
Use the menu Edit > Insert > … Word Count or Character Count - select
the version you want.
You can choose to insert the exact count or a rounding up to the nearest 50,
100, 500 or 1000 depending on your needs.
This option inserts a code that you must leave in the text. For example, the
word count rounded to the nearest 100 is 100
You can of course manually generate these codes once you know how they
work - it’s very simple.
COLLECTIONS
Collections
COLLECTIONS
Collections
A collection is a grouping of parts of your work. You can add anything to a
collection and you can have multiple collections at the same time. This is a
quick and easy way to build different views of your work, pulling out parts
that relate to eachother, that have a theme or a plotline, and putting them in
the same bucket. You can also build collections of research documents which
can be a good way of quickly finding what you want. Collections are shown
in the Binder with their own header tabs.
You can use Collections to:
Experiment with an alternate scene flow without disrupting the original layout.
Collect all scenes which still need to be edited.
Designate items which you wish to share with another author using one of the various syncing
methods.
Create a special compile group with an alternate selection and order than a typical compile of the
draft.
Store saved searches for future use, or to monitor workflows.
Set aside groups of documents in a day-by-day schedule, removing them from each daily
collection as you address them.
It’s like slicing through your book to reveal only certain parts of it, a new
map of the territory. You can edit anything in a Collection and it is the same
as working on the parts in standard Binder view.
You can make two types of Collections:
Standard Collection: these are collections that you make by adding and removing items.
Saved Search Collection: these are searched again every time you view the tab.
To see the Collection interface in the Binder, click the Collections icon in the
toolbar, or use View > Collections > Show Collections
You will notice that the Binder has added a bunch of stuff in its header.
These are tabs and they relate to Collections but also to Search results and
some other stuff. Initially there will be no Collections in the header.
Use the + icon in the header to create a Collection. You can create as many as
you want. Each Collection takes a different colour.
Selecting any Collection tab will ghost the other tabs and reveal the contents
of that Collection. You could hide the Collections interface at this point and
work with anything in the Binder. The background colour of the sidebar and
the header bar will help remind you that you are not in the full Binder. It is
easy to switch between Collections and you will soon get used to jumping to
the correct place.
When first created, Collections will be assigned with an automatically
generated colour, but their tabs can be recoloured by double-clicking the
colour chip to the right of the label. Likewise, double-click on the title to
change the name of a collection. The Binder and Search Results tabs cannot
be renamed or permanently removed.
COLLECTIONS
You can add anything from your manuscript or research documents or
anything else to a collection: documents, texts, images, files, PDFs etc.
Use the menu Documents > Add To Collection to add the document you are
currently on to any existing Collection or to make a new Collection.
You can also drag and drop any item from the Binder, from a Search result or
from another Collection into a Collection tab when it is visible.
You can also right click on any item in the Binder and use the Add to
Collection option from the menu that pops up.
Delete a Collection by first selecting the tab you wish to remove, and then
clicking the `-` button in the upper title bar.
COLLECTIONS
In addition to adding anything from a search to a Collection, you can convert
any Search into a Collection. This has the effect of saving the search for
future reference.
Use the Toolbar Search window to save a search by holding down on the
magnifying glass icon.
Name the search
Now you will see the search results saved as a Collection in the Binder. Each
time you return to this tab the search will be updated, in effect creating a live
search. Remember, you will only see these in the Binder if you have turned
on Collections.
To freeze a saved search so that it does not make the search again each time,
select the tab in the sidebar, and use the menu command View > Collections
> Convert to Standard Collection. You will only see this option if you have
selected a saved search.
Backup and Saving
Snapshots
Saving your work
BACKUP AND SAVING
SNAPSHOTS
SNAPSHOTS
With snapshots you record a particular file or set of files at a particular time.
You can easily snapshot anything you are working on as often as you like.
Then you can roll back to an earlier version if you need to, or you can
compare a current version with an earlier version.
You need to create Snapshots manually, which may be a drawback.
Personally, whenever I’m about to embark on any sort of edit I try to
remember to snapshot the part I’m working on. Ninety-nine percent of the
time I don’t ever see the snapshot, but it’s always nice to know it’s there if
things to disastrously wrong.
You can add Snapshots by using the + button in the Snapshot Inspector or by
using the Ctrl-5 keyboard shortcut. As soon as you use this command you
will see a new timed and dated snapshot added to the list for this document.
You can name your snapshots by clicking on the name in the listing, but you
can also use the shortcut Ctrl-Shift-5 to get an option to name the snapshot as
you take it.
Although there are several ways to create Snapshots and many ways to view
them, all the Snapshots of any particular document will be visible in the
Inspector. This provides a handy reference if you need to roll back or
compare your current document with your Snapshots.
Use the Snapshot button in the footer of the Inspector to get to the Snapshot
pane.
The Snapshot pane in the Inspector is a full length pane, it occupies the
Inspector from top to bottom. The top of the pane will show what Snapshots
you have taken and the lower part of the pane will show the selected
Snapshot. Obviously, if you haven’t taken any Snapshots the pane will be
empty. You can experiment by taking a Snapshot with the tools at the top of
the pane. Use the + to make a new Snapshot and the - to delete one.
SNAPSHOTS
Once you have amassed any number of snapshots, you can roll back and forth
through them and easily compare different versions. You can then cut and
paste text from an earlier version into the current version or just roll back to
an earlier version.
Highlight the version you want to roll back to. The content of this version
will show in the lower part of the pane. Click the Roll Back button and the
page will revert to the desired version.
BACKUP AND SAVING
SAVING YOUR WORK
Backups
Automatic Backup
Manual backup
Export files
SAVING YOUR WORK
Backups
There are several things that can be thought of as backups and they each play
a different role:
Automatic backups
Manual backups
Snapshots
Sync
Export
Copy
Compile
SAVING YOUR WORK
Automatic Backup
The first thing to note is that, right out of the box, Scrivener is looking out for
you. Automatic backup is set up and running. Automatic backup will be
turned on. You can choose the options of having your work backed up when
you open a project, when you close it and when you do a manual save.
Choosing all of them is probably overkill as your work is being saved
automatically anyway as you go along. You can also set compression, date
based backup file names (so you can work out which is which if you need to
use one) and how many backup files to save. Backup preferences are at Tools
> Options… > Backup (F12)
You an get to this folder by clicking the Open backup folder... Button
To change the backup directory, click the Choose... Button. Navigate to your
external directory of choice and select this destination. Now your work will
be backed up to a safe destination.
You really need to change this directory for an external one as soon as you
can. If you are saving to the same machine you are working on and your
computer disk dies you will lose your work. Use either an external (plug in)
hard drive or an internet service such as Dropbox (http://dropbox.com).
SAVING YOUR WORK
Manual backup
You can also make a manual backup at any point, perhaps when you finish
a section or when you’ve added a lot of new material. Use File > Back Up
> Backup Now
You can change the backup folder with File > Back Up > Back Up To ...
You can also use this menu to exclude the document from automatic
backups.
SAVING YOUR WORK
Export files
You can also export everything in the Binder as a backup. This works as a
sort of belt and braces way of creating a copy of everything you have.
To export files and folders from the binder as individual files and folders on
your system, select the files you wish to export in the binder and use File >
Export > Files...
This will by default also export anything inside the selected items as well.
This way you can select an entire chapter and export all of its section files at
once. When exporting more than one file, Scrivener creates an folder on the
disk to hold all of the exported files.
Shortcut is Ctrl-Shift-X
Compiling
Compiling how you want it
Formatting for compiling
COMPILING
COMPILING HOW YOU WANT IT
WYSIWYG or not
Summary Interface
Format options
There’s not much point to producing the perfect opus unless someone gets
to see it. What your output will be depends on what you are producing
your work for, but the good news is that Scrivener has a multitude of
options and can usually generate exactly what you need.
Whether you want a straightforward Word document with everything in it
or to produce a single chapter as a PDF, or anything inbetween, Scrivener
can handle it.
You also, at the point of producing output, get to choose a whole set of
formatting options. As Scrivener is a writing environment, up until now
you haven’t really been bothered about what your masterpiece will look
like, have you? So you have concentrated on the research, the structure,
the story arc, the characters and all the elements of your work. Now you
get to play with the look and feel of it, whether it is going as a text
document to an editor or as a ready to sell Kindle book. You are in control,
all you need to do is tweak a few dozen settings and push the button.
Scrivener isn’t a Word Processor. Well, it is and it isn’t. But it isn’t a word
processor in the way that you’ve been used to. One of the things that
confuses newcomers to Scrivener is that they can’t see all their work in a
single window, they can’t send copy to their friends or editor and they
don’t know how to get a printed copy out.
It is often said that Scrivener needs to work with a word processor. This is
not strictly true—you can use Scrivener without ever owning a word
processor. However, if you have heavy duty editing needs, or you want to
distribute your work to outsides who use Word or Open Office or other
software, you’ll need to Compile your text before you can do this.
Compiling takes many forms and is one of the most amazingly useful parts
of Scrivener, but it isn’t any use until you’ve actually got something to
export.
There are many forms of Compiling and you can choose what goes into a
Compile (and more usefully, what doesn’t).
You can easily experiment with Compiling as soon as you have some text
in your document. You can write this from scratch, or import a document
that you’ve written elsewhere. Then click the Compile button in the
Toolbar
Choose a Predefined Format from the drop down menu at the top of the
window. These options will. Some experimentation here is desirable. To
fully understand how to control the Compile settings see Advanced
Compiling.
Compile settings are an intrinsic part of your project; they're just as much a
part of it as any folder or file in your binder. They will be saved with the
project and travel with it if you move it to another machine or share it with a
collaborator. The available compile presets are global to your machine, and
can be applied to any of your projects, but once they are applied those
settings are in your project. You can also save custom setups as your own
presets to be used in this same fashion, or export them as portable files which
can be used to share settings with colleagues, or update a second computer.
Twelve things to know about Compiling:
Make a test page and compile it to test your settings
Where possible use the simple (Summary) settings
If you’re making a custom layout File and Folder Levels are important
Save your options setup as soon as you are happy with it
You can number your parts or chapters in the Section Layout
You don’t have to output everything - select what you need when you need it.
To make any individual documents retain format in Compile Draft, check Preserve Formatting in
the Inspector.
To print an outline, go to File > Compile Draft and include only titles and synopses.
Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS)
WYSIWYG or not
As you write your project you have two choices: to carefully format as you
go along, using the Scrivener format tools, or to ignore any formatting and
either format on Compile or export to a formatting tool of choice and do your
final editing there.
If you decide to format as you go, for example if you are making a non-
fiction book that needs to be structured in a certain format, then you need to
make that choice at the start of work and stick to your style choices
throughout.
When you go to Compile, you have a choice to export as is in a What You
See Is What You Get manner, or to change the styling on export.
Override
You can override standard output text appearance when you export to
Compile. While components such as Title and Synopsis can be formatted to
your choosing, the main text area will remain greyed out.
In File > Compile… > Formatting you will see this option at the top of the
pane: Override text and notes formatting
To make any changes to the main text body formatting you need to enable the
formatting override. In the header for the structure table, click the checkbox
labelled Override text and notes formatting. When this option is engaged,
your entire manuscript will be given a uniform appearance which can, if you
choose, be radically different from how it looks in Scrivener. When this box
is checked the greyed out text area will turn black. Inserting the cursor into
this text will cause a format bar to appear that allows you to set how the text
of your project will appear once exported.
Summary Interface
There are two versions of the Compile interface, Summary and All Options.
The Summary version presents a minimal amount of information with little
option to customise what you are setting. You choose from presets to compile
your text.
The Summary options window is the quickest and simplest way to compile
your work. If you find a preset option that works for you then there is no
reason to ever go to the All Options interface, which adds a lot of complexity
(and potential confusion) to the mix. However, you might like to take a look
at the All Options window to see what settings become available.
There are two key menus to set your output format in the Summary window:
Format As: and Compile For: Format As offers a range of standard output
layouts (including your own saved custom versions) and Compile For offers a
range of destination formats such as Print, Word, First Draft etc.
Format As
The Format As: options affect both the layout and the content of your output.
For example, if you choose Synopsis and Titles, that is what you will get,
whereas if you choose Proof Copy you will get the entire manuscript.
The preset options are:
E-book
Enumerated Outline
Non-Fiction Manuscript Format
Non-Fiction with Sub-Heads
Non-Fiction with Sub-Heads (Hierarchical)
Novel standard manuscript format
Outliner
Times 12pt
Settings
The Compile For options generate a document in the format for the program
you intend to use next, printing or for a publishing format such as Amazon’s
Kindle.
The options are:
Print
Preview
Rich Text Format (.rtf)
Plain Text (.txt)
Word (.doc)
Open Doc Format (.odt)
Web Page (.html)
eXtensible Web Page (.xhtml)
PostScript (.ps)
EPub eBook (.epub)
Kindle (Mobi) Book (.mobi)
The All Options Compile interface offers a rich and complex range of
settings that can take some getting used to but which offers a chance to tweak
your output very precisely. It can be a bit overwhelming at first but is worth
paying attention to so you can work out which parts are relevant to your
output.
The Format As and Compile For menus are the same as in the Summary
interface and offer the same options. As you change the Format As: menu
you will see the available options in the left hand column change. For full
details on each of these options see Frmatting for Compiling and Advanced
Compiling.
Format options
Original
This is the standard compiler setting, and in a sense it isn't really a preset, just
a complete lack of one. It will preserve your draft as closely as possible
without adding any additional page breaks, titles, formatting adjustments, and
so on. If you have very carefully designed your book from the start, this
might be the best option, or at least the best starting point.
E-book
A suitable, simple format for e-books, which generally require basic and
flexible designs in order to be displayed on many different screen reader
displays from cellular phones to tablet computers to dedicated black & white
electronic ink displays.
This format assumes all containers to be chapters, and all text files to be
scenes or sections.
Numbered Outline
Only outputs the title for each document, rather than all of its text. It will use
hierarchal numbering, and indenting to indicate the depth of items according
to the structure of your book (up to six levels of indentation, though you can
add further levels if you require). It has also been configured to accommodate
synopses, which you can optionally enable in the Formatting pane. This is a
useful starting point if you want a simple data sheet print out of all the pieces
in your Draft folder.
Non-Fiction with Sub-Heads
Similar to "Non-Fiction Manuscript Format", except with more extensive
sub-titling treatment down to four levels of outline depth for all file types.
Non-Fiction with Sub-Heads (Hierarchal)
Same as above, but uses a typical heading prefix numbering scheme as found
in many technical works.
Proof Copy
This will reformat your script to double-spacing so you can easily take notes,
and print a disclaimer after each chapter title as well as in the header, making
it easy to send out "Not for distribution" copies to your proofing team.
This preset has been set up to treat folders as chapters and everything else as
sections. If your book is organised differently, you will want to change how
things are arranged in the Formatting pane.
Non-Fiction Manuscript Format
Treats all folders and top-level file groups as chapters. Top level files will be
titled, and any files below the top level will be untitled, among other tweaks
to bring it more in line with common style practices in academia.
Novel Standard
Formats your book using standard Courier 12pt type and a number of
common conventions such as scene separators, double-spacing, underlined
emphasis (instead of italic), page numbers, and so forth. Note to get the full
benefit of this preset, you will want to use one of the rich text formats, such
as RTF. This preset has been set up to treat folders and top-level files as
chapters, with everything else being treated as sections.
Outliner
Presents an indented, easy to read outline that includes titles and synopses for
all file types. Files at levels greater than the top level will not print their titles
by default.
Times 12pt
This is a legacy preset which was used to offer an alternative to the standard
manuscript format for those that required Times New Roman manuscript.
This can now be achieved by using the quick font override option with the
standard manuscript preset.
Print
Use to print the compiled draft.
Preview
Preview of the draft.
PDF
.pdf
Use to print the compiled draft, or to save it as a PDF using the Print
dialogue’s PDF features.
Rich Text
.rtf
General purpose rich text format supporting multiple fonts, images, tables,
bullet points, footnotes and comments. Almost always the best option when
exporting for use in a general-purpose word processor, including Microsoft
Word.
Plain Text
.txt
UTF-8 (Unicode) plain-text file. Plain text contains no formatting but can be
opened almost anywhere, on all platforms.
Word Document
.doc
Simple Word format exporter. It is usually better to export using RTF format
—see the note below on exporting to Word .doc format.
Open Document Format
.odt
Simple ODT exporter. This uses Apple’s default exporter, which loses much
of the formatting, including indents and line spacing. It is always better to use
RTF if possible.
Web page
.html
Creates a single HTML file suitable for web-publishing.
eXtensible web page
.xhtml
Postscript
.ps
ePub eBook
.epub
Generate feature-rich eBooks for use in portable reading devices that support
the ePub format, such as the Sony Reader or iPad (ePub files can be dragged
into the iTunes Library to import them into iBooks).
Kindle (Mobi) Book
.mobi
Generate a Kindle ready eBook which can be uploaded direct for sale on
Amazon and distributed manually to anyone with a Kindle reader.
COMPILING
FORMATTING FOR COMPILING
Overview
Contents
Formatting Pane
Title Settings
Page Settings
Meta-Data
Adding a book cover
Transformations
KindleGen
Overview
Compile settings are an intrinsic part of your project; they're just as much
a part of it as any folder or file in your binder. They will be saved with the
project and travel with it if you move it to another machine or share it with
a collaborator. The available compile presets are global to your machine,
and can be applied to any of your projects, but once they are applied those
settings are in your project. You can also save custom setups as your own
presets to be used in this same fashion, or export them as portable files
which can be used to share settings with colleagues, or update a second
computer.
When you move from the Summary Interface to the more advanced
interface, you are faced with a huge array of variables. The moment you
start to change these settings you should save a new version of your
settings so you can return to a satisfactory set in the future.
Contents
The Contents pane in Compile is where you define which parts of the Draft
Scrivener will use to create your exported file.
The drop-down menu at the very top of the pane sets the contents of your
compile. As in the illustratino, this will have the Manuscript folder selected,
or whatever it has been renamed to (Draft, Work in Progress, etc).
You can use this drop-down to select only a part of the draft folder. Whatever
container you select will include everything from that point downward.
There are four columns in this pane. The Include, Page Break Before and As-
Is columns are toggled on and off with a checkbox. You can Option-Click
anywhere in the checkbox column to turn them all on or off.
Include. If unchecked this will not be used in the compiled product.
Pg Break Before. This option inserts a page break control before the checked document. A
common usage for this is to set special pages like title pages and table of contents.
As-Is. This option causes all formatting set in the Formatting pane to be ignored for the checked
document. Text will always be included.
Formatting Pane
Formatting Rules Pane
The Formatting Pane lets you include each text along with optional material
such as the Title, Meta-Data, Synopsis, Notes. You can also turn off (and on)
the Text itself. In this way you can create different versions of output, such as
an outline that includes only the Titles and Synopses, a compiled text with no
item titles or a complete version with all bells and whistles.
The method for controlling your own formatting settings goes:
Make sure all the elements of your project are at the correct Levels
Set what you want to output in the Formatting Pane
Specify formatting in the Formatting Editor
In the first instance you can toggle on or off the contents of each part of your
project on compiling.The options are:
Title
Meta-Data
Synopses
Notes
Text
Hierarchy Rules and Formatting Editor
Hierarchy Rules
These rules are applied to specific levels of hierarchy.

You can have multiple rules for handling folders and files depending on
which Level they are at.
In the illustrations above you can see how the files and folders in the Binder
sit at different levels which match the Levels in the Formatting Rules pane. I
have named the folders and files in the Binder to match these so you can see
the connection.
The Level 1 rule will apply to folders at level one only, the second Level rule
will apply to level two folders, and so on down the hierarchy.
Each item will have a formatting rule attached to it depending on what level it
sits at.
As Scrivener proceeds down the list of items it has been instructed to
compile, it will consult this formatting table for instructions on how to handle
it.
As you toggle elements on and off, you'll see a live preview of the Rule
settings which sets out how they will be inserted into the compiled
document. See Formatting Editor below.
Setting Format rules
First, select the Level that you want to edit the rules for and you will see how
that Level is currently formatted appear in the Formatting Editor.
Click the Modify button and an edit window will apear.

Set your desired formatting outcome for each Level that you are using in your
project.
You can treat it like an ordinary editor.
If you click in any part of it you will see the formatting controls adjust to
represent whatever formatting has been applied to the title.
Unlike with standard editing there is no need to select the entire text, you can
just place your cursor anywhere within it and use the Format Bar tools.
If you want different Levels to format in the same way you will need to set
the rules for each of them.
The Override text and notes formatting option is crucial to getting the output
you want. It is not so intuitive to understand, but it refers to overriding any
formatting you have set in your document.
If you check the box the rules that are set will come into play and your output
will almost certainly be completely different to your formatting.
If you want to keep formatting you have applied, make sure this option is
not checked.
Formatted text in Scrivener before Compile
Compiled output with No Override retains the formatting
Compiled with an Override applies rules and removes your formatting
Title Settings
The Modify button provides options for adjusting the content boilerplate text
around headings, heading formatting and letter case adjustments, as well as
the text immediately following the heading. These adjustments will only
appear when you compile. They will not be added to the binder items' titles or
adjust the base text itself, and are thus useful for keeping clutter out of the
binder and editor. Use Title > Formatting > Modify to open this settings
window.
Title Prefix and Suffix
This handles the insertion of additional text elements around the title of the
binder item itself. For example you can add the text ‘Chapter’ or ‘Part’ before
a number at a specific Level.
Tab characters and carriage returns can be added to these fields as well, and
they have been set to show invisible characters in order to facilitate designing
more complex or multi-line title adornments.
Prefix
Anything typed into this box will be printed before the relevant binder item's
title, on that same line. If you want to use this to insert the first part of a
multi-line title, insert at least one carriage return after the text in this box.
Suffix
The contents of this box will be printed after the binder item's title, or if the
binder item is not being printed, directly after the prefix. If you want this to
display information on a line below the main title, insert at least one carriage
return prior to typing anything in.
Case
In the Case tab you can set the Title, Title Prefix and Title Suffix to be
Uppercase or Normal.
Page Settings
The Page Settings compile option will only show on relevant Compile For:
options such as PDF, RTF, Word, Open Doc and Web page settings. Here
you can specify quite precisely how you want your ‘page’ to be set up.
Remember that, for many compile formats such as ebooks there is no page
setup to be dealt with.
What you are setting up here is your output page size. You can default to the
project Page Setup settings or create your own page format.
In the Formatting Rules table, the Options... button in the table header bar
lets you set just how much of your custom formatting will actually be applied
to the compiled manuscript and a few other options. These settings are global
to the entire compile.
Insert subtitles between text elements

When either Synopsis or Notes elements are enabled, Scrivener will insert a
subtitle to help set apart these sections from the main text.
Place notes after main text
Puts notes will be placed below the main text area instead of above it.
Meta-Data
This panel just gives you the ability to add a bit of meta-data to your output.
This information will be used in various output options, specifically for
digital publishing formats.
This panel allows you to manage how your Footnotes and Annotations are
handled in your output.
Footnotes
You can remove all footnotes and set the font for them.
Set where your footnotes are placed in the compiled document and what
separator is used before them. You can also set a title for the Footnote page.
Set a font for your Footnotes
Annotations
You can remove all Annotations here.
Adding a book cover
Choose any image imported into the Research part of the Binder can be
selected as a cover for an ebook. Use the Cover page: dropdown menu to
select your image.You can also name the Cover Page here.
Transformations
Conversion options here are fairly self-explanatory. All choices apply

universally to your text.
Straighten smart quotes
Convert em-dashes to double hyphens
Convert ellipses to tripe periods
Convert italics to underlines
Convert underlines to italics
Mark end of text with a chosen text
KindleGen
You need to have Kindlegen installed on your Mac in order to generate

.mobi ebooks for Amazon. You can download a free copy of Kindlegen
from http://www.amazon.com/kindlepublishing (just click on the built in
link to download a copy).
There is an option to Save the KindleGen log file with the exported Kindle
file. I have no idea what the KindleGen log file does or why, but having it
in the same folder as the compiled document doesn’t seem like a good idea
after a while.
Printing
Text Documents
PRINTING
Text Documents
You can print text documents individually or in groups directly from
Scrivener without compiling from File > Print Current Document... (Ctrl-
P)
Individual documents and supported media can be printed one by one. When
more than one text document has been selected in the binder, they will be
printed together.
If you are viewing the selection as a corkboard, index card printing will be
used, if viewing them in scrivenings, the text view will be printed using the
text document printing settings.
Exporting
Drag and Drop
EXPORTING
You can export any files from the Binder using File > Export > Files ...
Use Ctrl-Shift-X as a shortcut

When exporting more than one file, Scrivener creates a folder on the disk to
hold all of the exported files. Enter the name you would like to be given to
this folder in the text field, and then choose where you would like this folder
to be created. From the pop-up menu, you can choose to export text
documents as one of the following:
Rich Text (.rtf)
Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx)
OpenOffice.org (.odt)
Plain Text (.txt)
PDF (.pdf)
HTML (.html)
Extensible HTML (.xhtml)
PostScript (.ps)
All media files will be exported as they are. You can also choose to export
comments and annotations, meta-data, and/or snapshots; and optionally
choose to strip out all notation. Notes will be exported as separate files using
the text file format you chose above, and the meta-data (including the
synopsis, label, status and so on) will be exported into separate plain text
(TXT) files. The structure of folders created on disk will reflect their
structure in the binder, so you can export all of your files from Scrivener for
use in another application if you so wish.
EXPORTING
Drag and Drop
You can drag any file or folder from one Scrivener project into another.
Dragging and dropping includes meta-data such as notes, snapshots and
keywords.
You can’t drag a file or folder out of Scrivener onto the desktop.

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SCRIVENER FOR WRITERS

Scrivener and other marks ©Literatureandlatte.com

Finding Your Way around

Planning your Project

Writing and Editing

Managing Your Writing

Backup and Saving

If you’re going to do it ... you may as well do it right.

There’s a lot of information in this book. Scrivener is a complicated

The Blank Template

Composition mode removes all distracting sidebars and menus.

Making new containers

Creating your own label names and colours

Ctrl-clicking on a multiple selection of documents allows you to assign a

Creating your own Status names

Hiding the Binder

There are three view modes:

Short cuts for View Mode are:

Shortcut buttons are at the left side of the Toolbar

View mode chooser is in the middle of the Toolbar

In addition you will find:

All of the main audio/visual formats

Scrivener preferences are divided into seven categories.

Save and load your preferences from the Preferences window

Fonts for various areas in the working environment

Treatment of folders and files

Document : Corkboard : Outliner s

Document (Scrivenings) View > Document Ctrl-1

Corkboard View > Corkboard Ctrl-2

Full Screen button

Header bar status modes

The meta-data you can manage here is:

Notes: References: Keywords: Snapshots

Locking the Inspector

In the Inspector Document References are listed

Quick access to some of the settings comes in the footer.

The Outliner with a default set of columns showing

A novel using Outliner columns to reveal Status, Targets and Progress.

Find and Replace

The available searches are:

Keywords can be unassigned from a document by selecting them in the

The control strip contains:

Ctrl-+ splits the window horizontally

See Override Texts and Notes for full details.

Preferences for new documents

Converting text to default styles

Alt-Right Arrow shows/hides the Format Bar

Quotes to Smart Quotes

Quotes to Straight Quotes

Adding files and folders in the Binder

Levels in the hierarchy

Name the search

These rules are applied to specific levels of hierarchy.

Click the Modify button and an edit window will apear.

Insert subtitles between text elements

Conversion options here are fairly self-explanatory. All choices apply

You need to have Kindlegen installed on your Mac in order to generate

Use Ctrl-Shift-X as a shortcut

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