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Quick Start Note: If you’re viewing the “Quick Start” collection in the binder,
please dismiss it for now and return to the full binder by clicking on the “X” in
the bo om-right of the binder area. (Otherwise, this step of the tutorial
describing the binder will not make much sense!) To return to the “Quick
Start” collection when you’ve finished this step, simply click on the “Quick
Start” tab above the binder. (Ignore this if you did not choose only to view the
“Quick Start” collection when you started this tutorial.)

When you first open a Scrivener project, by default you are presented with
two panes:

1. T HE B INDER
On the left, you can see a list of files: the “binder”. This is an outline view that
contains three default folders: “Draft”, “Research”, and “Trash”. You can
rename these folders to whatever you like by double-clicking on them (in some
of the templates, for instance, the Draft folder has been renamed to
“Manuscript”). The binder is where you organise your project by creating a
structure and dragging and dropping your documents wherever you want.
The contents of the Draft folder represent the text fragments that will be
compiled into one long document when you export or print using File >
Compile…, which is the standard way of preparing your finished project for
printing or final forma ing in a dedicated word processor. This is very much the
raison d’être of Scrivener—to assemble the text of your manuscript in the Draft
folder for printing or export. (As such, the Draft folder is unique in that it can
only hold text files and folders.)
The Research folder can hold text or media files (images, PDF files, video
files and so on). You don’t have to put all research files into the Research folder,
though—you can create other folders for your support materials anywhere you
want.
The Trash folder speaks for itself; whenever you “delete” a document it
ends up here. Documents aren’t deleted completely until you select “Empty
Trash…” from the Project menu—so there’s no way you can accidentally delete
a file in Scrivener.

2. T HE E DITOR
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Next to the binder you have the main editor, which displays the current
document. The main editor is what you are looking at right now as you read this
text document. There are several ways to load a document in the editor, but the
one you will use most often is simply selecting a file in the binder, as you did to
load this one. Scrivener allows you to create or import any number of text
documents. You can also import image, web, movie and PDF documents. To
import documents, use File > Import > Files… or simply drag the files you wish
to import from File Explorer into the binder of your Scrivener project.
You can change the current document by clicking on another item in the
binder. Try that now—double-click a word in this sentence to select it (you’ll see
why in a moment), then click on “Alhambra” inside the “Research” folder (you
may need to expand the Research folder first by clicking on the triangle—or [+]
sign in Windows XP—next to it) and then return here (“Step 1: Beginnings”).
See how the selection that you created before is saved and scrolled to
automatically? Scrivener always remembers your cursor position and selection,
even between sessions. Use this way of “bookmarking your spot” to your
advantage as you progress through the tutorial.
So now you know that this area can be used to view different types of
documents, not just text.

Let’s try switching between documents again. You see the document on the
left beneath this one, the one entitled “Step 2: Header View”? Click on it now.
(Or, if you are going through the “Quick Start” collection only, click on “Step 5:
The Inspector”.)

You have just switched between documents. You might use different documents
for different chapters, different scenes, different ideas, articles, characters,
whatever you want. There are other ways of switching between documents, too.
Another one you will use frequently is the header view. See that bar at the top of
the text, the one that has the arrows on the left of it and says “Step 2: Header
View” in it? Well, that is the header view (which is sometimes also referred to as
the “header bar”). You can rename the document by clicking into the title of the
header view, and there are several options available in a menu if you click on the
icon next to the title.

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History Bu ons Sidebar Navigation
The arrows on the left of the header view that point left and right are the
history navigation bu ons and work much like web browser navigation arrows
—they allow you step back and forth through the documents you have had open
in the editor. The white up and down arrows on the right of the header bar step
through the contents of the binder sidebar sequentially. To see the difference, try
the following:
1. Click on the “Alhambra” image document in the Research folder again
and then click on the left arrow in the header view. You will be returned
to this document, because this was the one you had open last.
2. Click on the right arrow and you will be returned to the “Alhambra”
image document again. (Make sure you come back here afterwards
though!) You can use Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+] to navigate within history, too.
3. Now, with this document open, click on the down arrow on the right and
then click on the up arrow again to return here. Note how the down
arrow takes you to the next document in the binder, whereas the right
arrow takes you to the next document in the navigation history. If you
prefer the keyboard, you can use Alt+Shift+DownArrow and UpArrow
to do the same.
4. If you click on the li le icon next to the title of this document in the
header bar, you’ll find some handy commands you can use. One of these
is a “Go To” menu. This presents the contents of your binder in a
hierarchal menu arrangement. You can thus easily jump anywhere in the
Binder, even if it is hidden.
While we’re here, note that the selection highlight in the binder does not
necessarily follow what is being displayed in the main editor—if you change the
contents of the editor using the history bu ons, for instance, the selection in the
binder will not change. You can thus navigate around using the header view
without losing track of the original document on which you were working in the
binder.

Try using the “Go To” menu in the header bar icon menu to find and
navigate to “Step 3: Footer View”. You’ll need to first select the Draft sub-menu,
and then “Part 1: Basics”…

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If you ever find that after navigating through multiple documents you are not
sure where the current document is located in the binder, you can simply use
View > Reveal in Binder (Ctrl+Shift+8) to force the binder to show you where
you are. Right now, since you used a menu to get here, the Binder isn’t
highlighting what you are looking at. Try using the shortcut or menu command
to focus the binder selection on Step 3. This is especially useful if the item you
are looking to locate is buried beneath many sub-folders and not even visible.

Okay, so let’s get familiar with the editor. At the bo om of the window,
you can see a grey bar containing a pop-up bu on with a percentage in it (135%
by default) and a live word and character count. This is the “footer view”. Try
typing something in the yellow area below:

Continúo probando este negocio pero parece que se borró esto. Ya lo

acomodé metiéndome en Formato y Guiones
Done that? You will see that the word and character count in the footer
view changes as you type. Now try changing the percentage in the drop-down
menu at the bo om, too (click on it and select a new percentage)—you will see
that you can make the text bigger or smaller (useful for tired eyes). Feel free to
set that to a comfortable level for the remainder of this tutorial.

Scriptwriting Mode
The footer view will change depending on what you are viewing inside the
document. For instance, if you are typing a script (such as a movie screenplay),
the footer view will give you information on the various script elements. Try
selecting Format > Scriptwriting > Script Mode - Screenplay from the main
menu now. You will see another pop-up menu appear on the right saying
“General Text” (this just means that the currently selected text isn’t recognised
as a part of a screenplay). Click into the text on the line below:

CLICK INTO THIS TEXT.

Now try selecting different elements from the pop-up menu on the right of
the footer view. You will see that the above text automatically gets reforma ed
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reforma ed
to the script element you selected, and the footer view will show what will
happen if you press the tab or enter keys (which will move you to the next script
element). Note that you can hit Ctrl+\ to bring up that menu automatically and
then hit one of the keys specified in the menu to select an element without taking
your hands off the keyboard.
Scriptwriting mode is saved on a document-by-document basis, so you can
switch between documents that use script forma ing and regular text
documents. The icons of documents in the binder that use scriptwriting mode
are yellow and have a 3-hole punch along the left side, so that you can easily tell
them apart from other text documents.
Right, let’s return to normal prose mode now. Select Format >
Scriptwriting > Script Mode - Screenplay (Ctrl+4) again to de-select screenplay
mode.

Other Files
For PDF files, the footer view allows you to navigate between the pages. Click
on “spacewalk_info” in the Research folder to test this out, and then come back
here by clicking on the “back” arrow in the header view.

All good so far, I hope. Now let’s familiarise ourselves with some other
basic features. Click on “Step 4: Full Screen” in the binder.

Full screen is a very nice feature for blocking everything else out while you
write. I’m not going to pretend it’s innovative or anything—I think Blue-Tec
(now called The Soulmen), the creators of Ulysses for Mac, were the first to
implement something like this for a text editor—but it is very handy. Either hit
F11 or click on “Full Screen” in the toolbar above—do it now!

You should now be in full screen mode—it’s just you and your text. Some
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text. Some
things you need to know about full screen mode:
● Move your mouse to the bo om of the screen. You will see that a control
panel appears. From here you can change the text scale, set the position
and width of the “paper” (the text column), or its height by holding
down the Alt key and using the alternate slider, and view the word and
character counts of the document. There are also bu ons for displaying
the Keywords and Inspector (we won’t go into that right now, though, as
we have yet to talk about keywords and notes—come back and try them
out once you’ve gone through the rest of the tutorial) and a Go To menu
so you can switch documents without leaving full screen. On the far
right, you’ll find a slider for se ing how transparent the background is on
either side of the paper as well as a bu on for exiting full screen. You can
also hit F11 or the Escape key to exit full screen mode.
● You can only enter full screen mode for text documents.
● By default, full screen uses “typewriter” scrolling (another Ulysses first, I
believe). This simply means that as you type, the text will remain in the
centre of the screen vertically so that you don’t have to stare at the
bo om of the screen all the time. You can toggle this on and off via the
keyboard shortcut, Ctrl+G,Ctrl+T (which means you would press
Ctrl+G and then quickly follow with the T key). If you’d rather never
use it, you can set its default state to off in Tools > Options…, under the
Editor tab. This will only impact projects you create in the future, it will
need to be switched off in existing projects, as each can have their own
se ing.
● You can customise the look of full screen mode. You can use the
Appearance pane of the Options to change the background colours and
you can change the colour of the text in full screen mode (so you could
set it up to have a retro green-text-on-black-background look, for
instance).
Okay, let’s move on to “Step 5: The Inspector” while still in full screen
mode. Once there, hit the Escape key on your keyboard to return to the regular
editor.
To switch documents in full screen mode, move the mouse pointer to the
bo om of the screen and click and hold the “Go To” icon so that the menu
appears. Then, choose Draft > Part 1: Basics > Step 5: The Inspector.

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Now it’s time to meet the Inspector.

Click on “Inspector” in the toolbar (the blue disk on the right, with the “i”
inside it; or press Ctrl+Shift+I ). A third pane will appear on the right of this
view.
You may find this text a li le scrunched up now. If so, click on the
“Maximize” bu on at the very top-right of the window (the middle icon that
appears in most windows on your computer).
Right, let’s look at the inspector. At the top of the inspector, in the header
bar, you will see these bu ons:

The “References” bu on, second from the left, has an asterisk indicating content.
The padlock bu on on the far right allows you to “lock” the inspector to a
particular editor when the editor is split—we won’t worry about that for now,
though, as we haven’t looked at spli ing the editor yet. The other bu ons allow
you to choose what to view in the inspector. The number of bu ons that appear
will depend on what you are viewing in the current editor (the last two bu ons,
“Snapshots” and “Comments & Footnotes” are only available for text
documents, for instance). An asterisk next to one of the icons tells you that there
is content in that part of the inspector.

To begin with, make sure the leftmost inspector bu on, “Notes”, is

selected, and then click on the next document in the binder, “5a: The Synopsis
Index Card”.

The first thing to notice in the inspector is the index card at the top. This appears
in the Notes, References and Keywords panes of the inspector (but not in the
Snapshots or Comments panes, which require more space). The index card is an
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important concept in Scrivener. You can type a synopsis of your document into
the body of the index card (note the header of the index card can be used to
rename the document, too). One of the core ideas behind Scrivener is that every
document (or chunk of text, or image, or whatever) is associated with a synopsis,
which is represented in the inspector by the index card. You can then view these
synopses in different ways (which we will come to later) which will make
outlining and organising your work easier. The best way to understand this is to
imagine that each document in Scrivener is a sheet of paper that has an index
card clipped to it containing a summary of the document’s contents, which can
then be viewed alongside other index cards to get an overview of the whole.
You can auto-generate a synopsis by clicking on the bu on in the top-
right of the inspector: if any text is selected in the editor, it will be copied into the
synopsis; if no text is selected, the first few lines of text will be used.
You can also display an image in this area if you want. To do so, just click
on the icon of the index card with two arrows next to it in the header at the top
of the inspector and choose the image icon. The synopsis will be replaced by a
blank area containing the text, “Drag in an image.” You can then drag image
files from the binder or from File Explorer into this area. (If an image is selected
for a document in the synopsis area of the inspector, it will also be used to
represent the document on the corkboard instead of the synopsis text—we will
come to the corkboard a li le later.)
So that’s the index card. Below the index card are other tools to help you
organise your work, starting with the General pane. Note that the Synopsis and
General panes can be collapsed by clicking on the disclosure triangle in their
respective header bars.

Please click on “5b: General Meta-Data”. (Or, if you’re going only through
the “Quick Start” documents, click on “Step 6: End of Part One”.)

The “General” pane in the middle of the inspector contains several meta-data
elements:
Label and Status
Label and status are just arbitrary tags you can assign to your document. You
can set up the project labels and status list via Project > Meta-Data Se ings…
You might, for instance, rename “Label” to “POV” (for Point of View) and use
it to hold the name of the point-of-view character for each document. This way,
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it to hold the name of the point-of-view character for each document. This way,
you could easily run a search on all scenes that have a particular character as the
protagonist by searching on label only (don’t worry, we’ll get into the details of
how to do that later). Status works much the same, except that it is set up to
keep track of the state of the document by default—for instance, “Finished”, “To
do”, “A mess” and so forth—although you can rename it and use it for
something completely different, should you so wish. If you change the titles for
these meta-data types, the General Meta-Data section will show your custom
title instead of the default “Label” and “Status”.
Created/Modified Date
Switch between the created and modified date by clicking on the arrows next to
where it says “Created:” or “Modified:”. No surprises here—as you would
expect, the created date holds the date and time the document was first created
and the modified date holds the date and time the document was last modified
and saved.
Include in Compile, Page Break Before and Compile As-Is
These options affect how the document is compiled when you come to export or
print the draft (which we will come to later). They only have any meaning if the
document is contained inside the Draft folder. They are mostly self-explanatory:
● Include in Compile specifies whether the document should be included
in or omi ed from the draft when exported or printed.
● Page Break Before specifies whether the document should have a page
break before it (useful if it marks the beginning of a chapter, for instance).
● Compile As-Is tells the compilation process not to change the forma ing
or insert a title for this particular document, no ma er what the Compile
se ings are.
You can view all meta-data in columns in the outliner view, too (which is
covered in Part 10).

Next, let’s look at the “Notes” pane—click on “5c: Notes” in the binder.
At the bo om of the inspector is the notes area, where you can jot down
anything you want that will help you with your document. If you click in the
notes header bar (where it says “Document Notes”), you can flip between
Document Notes and Project Notes. As you would imagine, document notes
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are specific to each document and will change depending on the document you
are viewing in the current editor, whereas project notes can be viewed from any
document (project notes can also be seen in the inspector when you select one of
the special root folders—Draft, Research and Trash—which have no associated
meta-data or synopses).
You can have multiple project notes associated with your project (new
project notes can be added using the Project Notes window, available from the
Project menu).

Please click on “5d: References” in the binder.

Click on the next bu on in the inspector header bar, the one with the picture of
several book spines on it. This switches to the “References” pane (the index card
and meta-data area will remain where they are, only the notes will disappear to
be replaced by a list of references). The references pane allows you to store
references to other documents within the project, your computer or on the
Internet.

Click where indicated to (1) add a new reference or (2) remove the selected reference.
By clicking on the “+” bu on, you can choose to add a reference to a file on
disk or you can select a document inside the project. You can also drag
documents from within the project you are working in, from File Explorer, or
the URL from a browser address field, into the references table.
Double-clicking on the icon of a reference will open it: external references
open in their default application; internal references open inside Scrivener.
Double-clicking the reference title will let you edit the title and path. As with
notes, you can store references at the document or project level—click on the bar
where it says “Document References” to flip between Document References
(which are specific to the current document) and Project References (which can
be viewed from any document).

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Next click on the key-shaped bu on at the top of the inspector to view the
keywords pane and then move on to “5e: Keywords”.

As well as Label and Status, you can also assign keywords to your documents.
Keywords are useful for adding arbitrary tags to documents that you can use
when searching. So, for instance, you could add keywords for characters that
appear in a scene, the location a scene takes place, the theme, authors referenced,
or anything else (or you can just ignore keywords completely). You can add
keywords by clicking on the “+” bu on. You can also assign keywords via the
Project Keywords dialogue. Open that now by clicking on the “Keywords”
bu on in the toolbar (the black box with the key inside it) or Ctrl+Shift+O .

A floating window (that means you can keep it open while you work, and it
will always “float” on top of the other windows) will appear. This shows all of
the keywords that you have created or assigned to documents so far. You can
also create or modify keywords inside this window (you can change the colour
associated with a keyword by double-clicking on the colour chip in the Project
Keywords window) and drag them to the keywords table in the Inspector.
Another way of assigning keywords is by dragging them onto documents in the
binder or the outliner and corkboard views that we will look at later. You can
assign keywords to multiple documents at once by selecting the documents in
the binder and then dragging the keywords from the Keywords dialogue onto
the selection
Try dragging the keyword entitled “Assign this one” to the keywords table
in the inspector.
You can assign multiple keywords at once. To see this in action, click on the
triangle next to “Characters” in the floating Keywords dialogue to reveal the
names of some characters. Hold down the Ctrl key to select multiple keywords,
then drag all of the selected keywords into the inspector keyword table. Note
how all the selected keywords are added.
A quick way of searching for documents that have been assigned particular
keywords is to select the keywords you want to search for in the Project

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Keywords dialogue and then click on the “Search” bu on at the bo om. Try
that now, with the “Themes” keyword. The binder list to the left will be
replaced by a search result list. Only this one document should be listed. To
leave the search result list, click the “X” bu on in the lower right-hand corner of
the binder sidebar. We’ll learn more about searching later.

You can close the Project Keywords window now, either toggling it with
the toolbar bu on, Ctrl+Shift+O or clicking the “X” bu on in the corner of the
window.
Now click on “5f: Custom Meta-Data” in the binder.

If you click on the bu on at the top of the inspector with the icon of a tag on it,
you will by default be presented with a blank grey area with the message “No
Meta-Data Fields Defined” and a bu on with the title “Define Meta-Data
Fields…”. This area can be populated with custom meta-data that you create for
your project, and the data that can be viewed here can also be viewed as custom
columns in the outliner. This provides a way of assigning arbitrary information
to your documents. For instance, if writing fiction, you could add a meta-data
field for the time at which a scene takes place, or you could add a list of
characters that appear.
We first need to define some custom meta-data fields, though. Let’s do that
now:
1. Click on the “Define Meta-Data Fields…” bu on (alternatively, you can
choose “Edit Custom Meta-Data Se ings…” from the menu that
appears when you click on the gear bu on in the “Custom Meta-Data”
bar, or select “Meta-Data Se ings…” from the Project menu and then
choose the “Custom Meta-Data” tab).
2. Click on the “+” bu on in the bo om-left of the sheet that you’ve
opened, and enter “Date” into the row that gets added to the table.
3. Click on the “+” bu on again and this time enter “Characters”. For this
one, also click on the “Wrap Text” checkbox.

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4. Click “OK” to accept the changes and dismiss the sheet.
The Custom Meta-Data pane in the inspector will now show the two fields
you created above. Click into the field under “Date” and type something, then
do the same for “Characters”. Note that the “Characters” field will expand to fit
the text, because you selected “Wrap Text”.
You can view all custom meta-data in columns in the outliner view, too
(which is covered in Step 10).
For many projects you may not need to touch custom meta-data at all, but if
you ever find yourself wishing for an extra piece of information in the outliner or
inspector, then it’s good to know that it’s there.

Next, on to one of Scrivener’s most useful features for editing documents:

“Snapshots”.

As a writer, the chances are that you will on occasion be nervous about
commi ing changes to your text. This is what the “Snapshots” feature is for.
Before embarking on editing a document, you can click on “Take Snapshot”
(Ctrl+5) in the Documents > Snapshots menu. You will hear the sound of a
camera shu er which indicates that the snapshot has been taken. Let’s try that
now…
Once you have taken a snapshot, you can edit your document safe in the
knowledge that you can return to the old version any time you so wish. Click on
the “Snapshots” bu on (the one with the picture of a camera on it) in the
inspector header bar to see what I mean (you can also switch directly to the
Snapshots pane and have the inspector open if necessary by going to
Documents > Snapshots > Show Snapshots). The inspector now shows a list of
snapshots at the top, which should consist of the one you took and one I took
while writing the first version of this tutorial back in 2006. Clicking on a
snapshot in the list reveals its text in the lower part of the inspector. You can
restore an older version of your text by selecting the version you want from the
list and then clicking on “Roll Back” at the top (at which point, you will be given
the option of taking another snapshot of your current version, just in case you
forgot).
Snapshots are very useful for keeping old versions of your text around and
for checking what you have changed.

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Now let’s move on to Step 5h for information on the comments and
footnotes pane.

Now we’ll look at the “Comments & Footnotes” pane—don’t worry about
clicking on the bu on in the inspector header bar just yet though (for your
reference, the “Comments & Footnotes” bu on is the one with the “n.” inside a
square speech bubble).
Comments and footnotes in Scrivener work a li le like comments in Word
or OpenOffice, but they’re not exactly the same. Let’s take a look at them.
For a start, click on the orange highlighted text in the sentence below:

This sentence has a comment a ached[ Comments get displayed and

selected as soon as they are clicked on in the main editor.]

.
[Comments come in a variety of colours, try right-clicking on this comment.]

Note how the inspector automatically switches to the Comments &

Footnotes pane, and the comment associated with the text gets selected.
Next, click on the grey footnote in the inspector, directly below the
highlighted comment.

This sentence has a footnote a ached.1

See how clicking on the note in the inspector automatically selects the text
associated with it in the main editor?
If you click on a note in the inspector, the editor will automatically scroll to
the position in the text where the note has been placed. This allows you to use
the comments and footnotes to navigate the text, which means you can use them
for personal placeholders, too. Try scrolling to the bo om of this document, and
then clicking the orange comment to return to the spot where it is anchored.

Adding Comments And Footnotes

Let’s try adding some comments and footnotes. There are a couple of ways of
doing this. First, select some of the text in the following sentence:

Select some of the text[ Esta es la prueba de un comentario por parte de

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por parte de

MArco Picón] in this sentence.

Once you’ve selected a word or two in the above sentence, either click on
the “+” bu on in the top “Comments & Footnotes” bar in the inspector or use
the Format > Comment menu command. A new comment will be created in the
inspector and it will be selected ready for editing—add some text. Once you’ve
finished typing in the comment, tap the Esc key to return to the editor.
Alternatively, you can just click into or after a word to add a comment or
footnote to it. This time, just click into the word “commented” below so that the
blinking insertion point (or caret) is somewhere inside it:

This sentence will be commented.[ Esta es una otra prueba]

Again, create a comment using your preferred method. Note how the
whole word “commented” gets a comment associated with it.
Let’s try it with a footnote too. Place the cursor anywhere in the last word
of the following sentence:

This sentence will have a footnote after it when exported or

printed.2
This time, click on the “+fn” bu on in the inspector (note that you can add
icons for “Footnote” and “Comment” to the Format Bar by using Tools >
Customize Toolbar…).
Note how the footnote gets a ached to the word “printed”, including the
full stop. It generally doesn’t ma er where you a ach comments, because they
are usually for your own (or collaborators’) reference only, but with footnotes
you should always ensure that the footnote link (the grey highlight) ends at
exactly in the place you want the footnote number to appear when printed or
exported. Since the footnote highlight ends right after the full stop, that means
the footnote number will be inserted there, which is usually what you will want.

Excluding Punctuation from Footnotes

In some languages, footnote markers are placed before the final period
of the sentence rather than after it. If you write in such a language, you
can turn on “Terminate footnotes and comments before punctuation” in
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can turn on “Terminate footnotes and comments before punctuation” in
the “Editor” panel of Tools > Options.

Changing The Colour Of Comments

You can change the colour of comments by right-clicking on a comment in the
inspector. The contextual menu offers a choice of default colours, or you can
open the colour chooser to choose a custom colour with “More…”. You cannot
change the colour of footnotes, which use a single colour to differentiate them
from comments, although you can choose the background colour for all
footnotes in the “Appearance” panel of Options.
The contextual menu also allows you to convert comments to footnotes and
vice versa, and to revert comments or footnotes to their default forma ing (you
can set the default fonts in the “Appearance” Options panel).
Comments and footnotes are thus tucked away in the inspector until you
need them. When you come to export or print—which we’ll come to later—you
have a lot of control over how comments and footnotes get included in the
document. For instance, you could have all comments removed but footnotes
included as proper footnotes, or you could have comments exported as footnotes
and footnotes exported as endnotes. But if that sounds complicated, it’s not
something you need to worry about right now—just know that if you want to
make notes on your document, or add footnotes, this is one way to do it.

Now let’s move onto “Step 6: End of Part One”!

This brings us to the end of Part 1 of the tutorial. In the next section you will
learn about different ways of viewing and organising the documents in your
Scrivener project.
Folders (not just folders, but we’ll come to that shortly) can be viewed in
several ways, what we call “view modes”, but for now all you need to know is
that when you click on “Part 2”, you will initially see a corkboard, but in fact
what you want to see is the text of the folder document. This will make more
sense in a minute!
So after you click on “Part 2: Organisation”, take a look at the “Group
Mode” segmented control in the toolbar and ensure that all view modes are
turned off. The control should look like this (note how nothing is selected):

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If one of the segments is yellow, just click on the selected segment to turn it
off. This will leave you with just the text of “Part 2” in the editor, ready to read.

Go ahead and try that now.

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Welcome to Part 2 of the tutorial—you can close “Part 1” by clicking on the
triangle next to where it says “Part 1” in the binder on the left. You can also hide
the Inspector by clicking on the blue disk icon in the toolbar again. By now you
have learned some of the fundamental features of Scrivener. Now it’s time to
move on to some of the organisational features.

Quick Start Note: If you are viewing the “Quick Start” collection in the
binder, for this part of the tutorial, please return to viewing the full binder. (If
you do not, this part of the tutorial will not make as much sense, because
folders act differently when viewed from a collection.) Do so by clicking on the
“X” in the bo om-right of the binder area. (Ignore this if you did not choose
only to view the “Quick Start” collection when you started this tutorial.)

Firstly, notice that this document is actually a folder in the binder, which is
why you initially saw a corkboard when you clicked on it. There is no real
difference between text and folder documents aside from their icons and what
happens when you click on them in the Binder. Note that the folder icon for this
document (“Part 2: Organisation”) has a li le page icon in its corner. This means
that this folder contains text—the text you are reading now. It does not have
anything to do with the fact that it also has text documents inside it (such as
“Step 7” and so on). The other major difference between folders and text
documents is the default way they get viewed when you click on them. You’ve
already seen a small demonstration of that, but we’ll explore that in greater
detail in the next step.
In fact, you can convert a folder document into a text document and vice
versa very easily. Click on “Part 2: Organisation” in the binder to make sure it is
selected, and then go to Documents > Convert > Convert To File in the main
menu. The folder icon changes into a text stack (the stack indicates that the text
document has subdocuments). If you go back to the Documents > Convert
menu, you will see that now you have the option of converting it back to a folder
—do that now. The idea behind this flexibility is that you can choose to have
different visual indicators for different levels of organisation, and also you don’t
have to plan in advance how you structure your project, because if you end up
using a text document as a container for other files, you can always convert it to
a folder later, and vice versa.
To create new documents, click “Add” in the toolbar.
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If you click on the downward arrow next to the “Add” bu on, a menu
appears that lets you choose which kind of document you would like to add.
You can also add documents via the Project menu, binder sidebar footer and
contextual menus. Hi ing enter in the binder, outliner or corkboard will also
create a new file.
A Brief Word on Terminology:
You’ve seen a few terms thrown around at this point. The documentation,
application and this tutorial refer to the items in your binder depending upon
their type if necessary. In fact there was one right there. We use the term
document or item when the specific type is not important. A document can be a
folder, a text item, or even a PDF; hence the Document menu. Text items can be
referred to as text or files interchangeably. When files have other files within
them, we call that a file stack or a file group.

Okay, move on to Step 7 when you’re ready (you will need to expand “Part
2” by clicking on the disclosure arrow next to it). Or go get a cup of tea and a
biscuit.

Scrivener’s editor has four modes—four different ways of viewing your work—
and learning how and when to switch between them will make your Scrivener
experience much more comfortable. The four modes are as follows:

1. Single Document Mode

In this mode, the editor shows the contents of a single document, whether it’s a
text document, a folder, an image, a PDF file or whatever. The editor is in single
document mode right now.

2. Corkboard Mode
In corkboard mode, the editor shows the subdocuments of the current document
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as index cards on a corkboard. Let’s take a look at how that works right now:

a) Try clicking on the “Part 2: Organisation” folder in the binder, and then
click on the image of the corkboard in the toolbar (the one in the middle of the
group of three View Group Mode icons) so that it is selected:

Once you’ve taken a look at the corkboard, return here.

See how the subdocuments of the folder you had selected appeared as
index cards? If you open the inspector right now and select the “Notes” pane,
you will see the index card associated with this document—which you will have
seen on the corkboard, because this document is a subdocument of the “Part 2:
Organisation” folder.

b) Now—well, after you’ve read this bit, so you know how to get back—
click on the corkboard icon again, while viewing this document. You will see
that the corkboard is blank. This is because this document (“Step 7: Changing
Editor Views”) doesn’t have any subdocuments—but it could. After you’ve seen
the blank corkboard, click on the text icon to the left of the corkboard icon in the
toolbar icon to see the text of the document again:

3. Outliner Mode
Outliner mode is much like the corkboard mode, allowing you to see the
subdocuments of the current document, except that it shows them as rows and
allows you to view various columns of information and to view subdocuments
of subdocuments to any depth. Try repeating everything you did for the
corkboard mode above, but this time instead of choosing the corkboard icon,
click the outliner icon on the right (and remember to come back here afterwards):

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4. “Scrivenings” Mode
“Scrivenings” is the term for Scrivener’s combined text mode, and it is one of
Scrivener’s coolest features. It allows you to view or edit multiple text
documents as a composite—as though they were one long document.
Scrivenings mode is available when there are multiple documents available to
view as one. If you look at the “View Mode” control in the toolbar at the
moment, you will see that the left-most icon shows a single sheet of paper. This
indicates that the composite text mode is not available here, because you are
viewing a single document that has no subdocuments. So, let’s look at one that
does.
After reading this part, once more click on “Part 2: Organisation” in the
binder. When you do so, you will notice that the “View Mode” icon in the
toolbar changes:

View Mode icon (1) changes when Scrivenings mode is available for the selection (2).
(You will notice that when you select the “Part 2” folder again, it returns to
outliner mode—this is because Scrivener remembers which mode you last used
to view a group, and will automatically use it for viewing groups until you
change it again.)
The single text icon on the left has now changed into a stack of paper. This
means that it is possible to enter Scrivenings mode. To do so, you simply click
on the bu on with the icon of the stack of papers. Try that with the “Part 2”
folder now, and after selecting the stack of papers icon scroll all the way down to
the bo om of the editor, then return here by clicking back on “Step 7” in the
binder.
Done that? You should have seen that the text from all the various
subdocuments of the “Part 2” folder—including this one—were combined into
one long document, with dividers between them. You could have edited the text,
and your changes would have automatically been applied to all of the individual
files you altered.
What To Remember When Switching Views
You’ve now switched between all the main views. The main thing to remember
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to remember
is that when you are viewing a single document that has no subdocuments, there
are only three view modes available—because you can’t enter Scrivenings
(composite text) mode when viewing only a single document. In this case, the
left-most icon is a single sheet of text. You click on the mode you want to view—
single document mode, corkboard mode, or outliner mode.
When you are viewing a folder or a document that has subdocuments,
though, there are four ways of viewing the editor available—the single document
(disregarding the content of any children items), corkboard and outliner mode,
and also Scrivenings mode. You can return to single document mode by de-
selecting all of the segments of the Group Mode control—that is, click on the one
that is selected to de-select it—just as you did at the end of Step 6 to view the
text of the “Part 2” folder.
You can also switch between view modes using the top three items in the
View menu, or using the Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2 and Ctrl+3 keyboard shortcuts.

I know, I know—now you really do need that cup of tea, and probably
another biscuit too. Once you’re done, we’ll take a look at each of these view
modes in more detail. Click on “Step 8: Splits” to continue.

I know, I promised, but before delving further into the view modes, let’s pause
to check out another important feature of Scrivener that will save us from having
to jump around so much between folders and instructions. The chances are that
from time to time you are going to want to split the editor so that you can view
two parts of the same document, or two entirely different documents, alongside
one another. So let’s do that now. Go to View > Layout > Split Horizontally.
Alternatively, click on the bu on in the right of the header view above (the
square with the horizontal line through its middle):

Vertical and horizontal split bu ons.

Suddenly, this document is displayed in two panes, which is great when
you need to refer back to an earlier place in the file, but don’t want to lose the
ability to keep typing in the current location. Note that through the Layout
menu, you can also switch to Vertical Split, or use No Split to get rid of the split
altogether.
All well and good, but we don’t want to be limited to viewing only one
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only one
document at a time, do we? We can do that in any word processor worth its salt
(whatever that means[ No need to write in: it refers to the fact that Roman soldiers used to
get paid in salt. (The great thing about these tutorials is that you’re always getting users writing
in to point out your mistakes or tell you stuff about Romans. If you spot any mistakes or have
any interesting but relevant factoids, please don’t hesitate to write to
contact@literatureandlatte.com.)]), after all. And naturally, we’re not. Click on any
document in the binder, and it will be shown in the editor that currently has the
focus. You can tell which editor currently has the focus because when there is a
split, the header bar of the focused editor turns blue.
In the binder, click “ThisIsBuzzAldrin” from inside the “Research” folder.
“ThisIsBuzzAldrin” is an audio file, so you won’t see much other than a media
control bar in the lower part of the top pane (actually, that audio file is the
beginning of the coolest phone message I ever picked up; sadly, the message
was not for me).
Now you can play the audio file in the top pane whilst typing in this
bo om pane. You can control the media file using the keyboard shortcuts
defined in the View > Media menu. Ctrl+Enter will play or pause the file, for
instance—without you having to click outside of this text. These shortcuts are
very useful for transcription work, or for referring to a video file while writing.
Also note the bu on in the lower-right of the media control bar:

That is the “pause and rewind” bu on. If you click it, it will turn blue,
indicating that it is on. When “pause and rewind” is turned on, whenever you
pause the media file it will automatically be rewound a couple of seconds (you
can determine exactly how many seconds it gets rewound in the Navigation tab
in Tools > Options…). This is another useful feature for transcription work.
But of course, you can use the split view to view any two documents in
Scrivener alongside one another. The snazziness of this feature should
immediately be apparent: you can refer to another text, PDF, image or
multimedia document in one view while typing in another. You could hide the
toolbar, the header and footer views and the binder and just have the two
documents side-by-side while you work.

Make sure this bo om pane has the focus (click in it if you are not sure) so
that its header view is blue, and click on “Step 9” so that it opens here.

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The corkboard is one of Scrivener’s most distinctive structural tools, so let’s look
at that now.

Basic Usage
The corkboard shows the immediate subdocuments of the selected document.
To see what I mean, click into the top editor to give it the focus (it should still be
showing the “ThisIsBuzzAldrin” media file; if so, click somewhere in the grey
area so that the header bar of the top editor turns blue). Once the top editor has
the focus, click on the “Draft” folder in the binder, and ensure that the “Group
Mode” control in the toolbar has the corkboard bu on selected (or press Ctrl+2).
Note how the corkboard in the top editor now shows the folders “Part 1”
through to “Part 5” and the “Other Stuff You Might Want to Know” document
all represented as index cards. If you look in the binder, you will notice that
these five folders and the text document are the immediate subdocuments (or
“children”) of the Draft folder—that is, they are only indented one level from the
Draft folder. The corkboard thus allows you to concentrate on individual levels
of your structure.
Next, in the corkboard itself, double-click on the folder icon in the second
card, which is titled “Part 2: Organisation”. This will drill down to show the
contents of the “Part 2” folder represented as index cards. Each card shows the
title of the document and a synopsis area that can be used to remind you of the
content of the document or to note what you intend to write in the document
later. You can edit the synopsis or title by double-clicking into a card, and you
can drag the cards around (and into the binder) to reorder your documents.
If the inspector is open while the corkboard (or outliner) is open, it will
show information for the currently selected card. (Remember, the bu ons at the
top of the inspector let you show different meta-data.)
You can change the corkboard se ings—the number of cards that get
drawn across, their width and so on—by clicking on the bu on with the image
of four index cards in it in the right of the footer bar beneath the corkboard:

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(Incidentally, if you don’t like the corkboard background, you can change it
to a colour or texture of your choice in the Corkboard tab of the Tools >
Options. You can also change the way the cards look, to get rid of the rounded
corners to make them look more like real index cards, or switch to virtual pins
instead of corner markers for labels, which we will turn on shortly.)

Controlling The Other Editor From The Corkboard

Note the bu on containing the two arrows facing in opposite directions in the
corkboard footer bar:

This is the “Auto-Load Bu on”. Click on it now, and note that the bu on
stays depressed, indicating it is active. When this bu on is on, selecting
documents in the corkboard (or outliner) will open them in the other editor if
there is a split. Try clicking on the “Step 7” card, then on the “Step 8” card, and
then on the “Step 9” card (which should bring you back here).
See how clicking on the cards opened the documents associated with them
in this editor? That’s a useful trick, as it means you can hide the binder and use
the corkboard or outliner to navigate if you want to, or just use the corkboard or
outliner as secondary navigation tools.
Click on the Auto-Load bu on again to toggle the feature off, then try
clicking on the cards in the corkboard once more—this time nothing will
happen, because the bu on has been deselected.

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View Options
Go to View > Corkboard Options > Label Pins. The result will depend on the
look you have chosen for the label indicator in the corkboard Options. If you are
using the default corner mark look, then each card that has a label associated
with it will now have a colour chip in its top-right corner; if you are using the
pin look, then each index card will now display a pin holding it in place that is
the colour of the label associated with the document. Alternatively, you can
select View > Use Label Color In > Index Cards to tint the actual cards with the
colour of the label. You can also select Status Stamps via View > Corkboard
Options, which places a diagonal stamp on the cards—this stamp shows the
status associated with the document represented by the index card.
Right-clicking on an index card brings up a contextual menu that allows
you to change the label (and thus the colour of the pin) and status—you can use
the contextual menu to assign a label or status to multiple cards, too, by selecting
all the cards you wish to affect before right-clicking on one of them.
There are other viewing options available in the View > Corkboard
Options menu, but we won’t cover them here (though they are all explained in
the user manual, available from the Help menu, of course).
One more thing to note, before we move on, is that graphics files get
displayed on the corkboard as pictures. Click in the corkboard above to ensure it
has the focus, and then click on the “Research” folder to see what I mean.
Okay, we covered a lot there! Remember that you don’t have to use the
features that don’t appeal to you. Not all writers like corkboards—some
Scrivener users never touch the corkboard at all, preferring the outliner, which
we’ll come to next.
When you’re ready then—after a stretch of the legs, a glass of wine, a good
curse at the prolixity of this tutorial’s author, whichever helps—let’s move on to
Step 10 and look at the outliner in more depth. Don’t forget to click into this
split before switching documents!
The binder is a very useful organizational tool, but one of the key concepts
behind Scrivener is the linking of synopses to documents—and the binder does
not show synopses (well, actually, it does show them in tool tips if you hover the
mouse over items there, but the binder is more intended as a table of contents).
The corkboard, as we have seen, is a good way of viewing and editing the
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synopses of multiple documents, but not everyone likes corkboards and besides,
the corkboard only shows one level of a group’s subdocuments at a time. This is
where the outliner comes in: it provides a way of structuring multiple levels of
your project at the same time as seeing much of the data associated with your
documents.
Click into the upper pane (which should still show the corkboard) so that it
receives the focus (its header bar will turn blue), and then click on the “Draft”
folder in the binder. Next, select the “Outliner” segment of the “Group Mode”
capsule in the toolbar:

The upper view will now have turned into an outliner, showing all of the
items contained inside the Draft (because that is what we selected in the binder).
Click on a disclosure triangle next to one of the folders to reveal the next level of
subdocuments (or Alt-click on a disclosure triangle to open all subfolders inside
the folder too, all the way down to the bo om of the hierarchy).
Next, with the outliner still focused, click on “Part 2: Organisation” in the
binder. The outliner will now show only the subdocuments of the “Part 2”
folder.
Choose which columns appear by clicking on the bu on in the top-right of
the outliner title bar, or via the View > Outliner Columns menu.

The outliner allows you to edit the titles and synopses of various
documents, assign the label or status, set the “Include in Compile”, “Page Break
Before” and “Compile As-Is” flags and reorganise documents by dragging them
around. You can also view various other meta-data, such as the word and
character counts of documents. The “Characters” and “Date” custom meta-data
you created in Step 5f are also available in the list of columns, so you can add
those for viewing and editing in the outliner if you wish.
By default, when you drag items around you can drop them on other items
as well as between them (dropping “on” places the dropped document inside
the document it was dropped on, below the other subdocuments). You can also
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You can also
use the Ctrl+Arrow keys (up, down, left and right) to move documents around–
this can be useful when you want a li le more accuracy. You can also use these
same shortcut keys in the Binder.

We can get rid of the split now. To do so, click on the bu on in the right of
the header bar for this editor:

Once you’ve done that, go to Step 11.

Let’s take a closer look at “Scrivenings” mode. The whole point of Scrivener is
to make working on a long text easier by allowing you to break it up into smaller
pieces, but you will often want to see how those smaller pieces fit into the greater
whole. This is what Scrivenings mode lets you do.
There are two ways of entering Scrivenings mode:
1. You can select a folder or container in the binder that contains text
subdocuments, and use Scrivenings mode to view all of the documents
inside the folder (including the folder itself, if it has text associated with
it) as though they were one long document.
2. You can select arbitrary documents in the binder and view them as
though they were a single document.
We already did (1) in Step 7, so let’s try viewing arbitrary documents this
time. Once you’ve finished reading this paragraph, click on “START HERE” at
the top of the binder and then, holding down the Ctrl key, click on “Step 7:
Changing Editor Views” and “Step 11: Scrivenings”, so that all three documents
get selected. Once that’s done, ensure that the stack of papers is selected in the
“Group Mode” control in the toolbar, and then scroll down towards the bo om
of the text that gets loaded into this editor and look for the pink highlighting
below—do that now.

Back here yet?

Do you see what just happened? “Scrivenings” temporarily combines the
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Do you see what just happened? “Scrivenings” temporarily combines the
selected documents into a single text. You can select non-contiguous documents
or you can choose to view and edit the contents of a folder or group. If you were
writing a novel, you could therefore write each scene of a chapter in isolation
and then view and edit the whole chapter as though it were a single document
using Scrivenings; or you might run a search on a particular character and view
the results as one long text so that you can see how the storyline for that
character pans out in isolation.
So that you can see where one document ends and the next begins, there is
a horizontal dashed dividing line between sections.
The Inspector displays information about the chunk of text you are
currently editing, so if you lose your place you can always open that and check
the index card to see where you are.
An important point to note about Scrivenings is that you cannot make
textual edits across the individual document boundaries, so if you try to select a
range of text that spans more than one document block and try to edit it, you
will not be able to. However, within each section, every edit you make will be
automatically saved into the original document.

Quick Start Note: If you are only going through the “Quick Start” sections,
you can now return to the “Quick Start”collection by clicking on the “Quick
Start” tab above the binder.

Now it’s time to click on Step 12 (or Step 16 if you are only going through
the “Quick Start” sections).

At the risk of telling you the blindingly obvious, project search allows you to
search for documents inside your project that contain a particular word, phrase,
label, keyword and suchlike. Just click in the search field on the right-hand side
of the toolbar and type the phrase you want to search for.

Project Search Tip

When clicked on, the magnifying glass icon in the search field brings up
a menu that allows you to modify the search options. When the search
field is left blank, a summary of the more important options will be
provided for your convenience. Notice that right now “Keywords” is
chosen. That's because we were testing the search function with project
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keywords a li le earlier.

Go ahead and change the “Search In” scope to "All" using the magnifying
glass menu. Now click in the search field and type “collection”.
Note how the binder is replaced by a darker coloured “Search Results” list.
This is a list of documents that contain the word “collection” somewhere within
them. Also note that the search term—in this case “collection”—is now
highlighted in yellow in the current document wherever it appears. You can
click on the documents in the search results list too, and easily see at a glance
where the term you searched for is in the document. For longer documents, just
click into them in the editor and go to Edit > Find > Find… (or hit Ctrl+F ) to
bring up the Find panel, which can be used to search within the documents
themselves. To get rid of the search results list, you can click on the “close”
bu on on the right of the search field (or just tap the Esc key):

Or on the bu on in the footer bar of the sidebar:

Do so now, and then move on to “Step 13: Collections”.

Are you still with us? We’re most of the way there, I promise.
We’re going to look at a feature called “Collections” next. Collections
provide a way of keeping lists of documents that have nothing to do with their
binder order. The easiest way to understand what I mean is to create a
collection, so let’s do that now.
First, we’re going to be doing a lot of clicking around in the sidebar, but we
don’t want to keep losing our spot, so let’s lock the editor in place. Click on the
icon in the editor’s header view to bring up the header bar menu, and click on
“Lock in Place”:

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The header bar will turn dark pink. This indicates that the editor is now
“locked”, which means that clicks in the binder will have no effect. Try clicking
on different documents in the binder to see what I mean—they will no longer
get loaded into the editor when selected as they normally do. This useful ability
can be toggled with Ctrl+Shift+L , too.

Creating an Arbitrary Collection

Click on the “Collections” bu on on the left-hand side of the toolbar.

You will see an extra area appear at the top of the binder with a blue and
purple tab in it, entitled “Binder” and “Search Results”. Try clicking on the
“Search Results” tab.
See what happened? The last search you ran gets run again, and its results
appear where the binder was; this will even be saved between sessions. We’ll
soon learn how you can save more than one search, permanently, as tabs.
Click on the “Binder” tab to return to the binder.
Now hold down the Ctrl key and click on several documents in the binder
to select them. Once you have selected five or six—it doesn’t ma er which ones;
they can even be from the Research folder or elsewhere—click on the “+” bu on
in “Collections” bar at the very top of the binder:

The binder will temporarily disappear, to be replaced by a flat list showing

only the documents you selected. You haven’t moved those documents, though
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—they are all still in their rightful places in the binder. You’ve just created a
collection (more specifically, an arbitrary collection) and when you created it, the
selected documents were automatically added to it. To see what I mean right-
click on one of the documents in the collection list and select “Reveal in Binder”
from the View menu. This will show you where the document is located in the
binder. Click back on the collection tab once you’ve tried this, to return to the
collection.
You can rename the collection to anything you want, and you can change
its colour by double-clicking on its colour chip:

Double-click where indicated to (1) rename or (2) change the colour of the collection.

Go ahead and try changing the title and colour. You can also drag and drop
tabs amongst one another to change their order.
Let’s add some more documents to the collection. Click back on the Binder
tab and select some different documents. Once you’ve selected some, drag and
drop them onto your collection tab. You will see that the documents you
dragged onto the tab are now in the collection too. (No duplicates will be added,
each item can only appear once in the list.)
You can drag and drop the documents in the collection list to arrange them
into any order you want. If we unlocked this editor, clicking on documents in
the collection would open them in the editor, just as happens when selecting
documents in the binder. To remove items from the list, simply select them and
click the “-” bu on in the divider bar above the item list (you can also just press
the Del key on your keyboard). Note that this will not delete the original item, it
will merely remove it from this list.
Collections can be used for whatever you like. You might, for instance, use
them to gather together documents you need to do more work on, removing
them as you are satisfied with them. You might use a collection to experiment
with the order of documents before commi ing to the arrangement. Once you
were happy with the arrangement, you could select all the documents, right-
click on them, and use Move To from the contextual menu to move them all to
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them all to
the location in the binder you want them.

Search Collections
There’s another way of creating collections, too—you can save your search
results as collections. Let’s create a collection of all documents with their status
marked “To Do”:
1. Click on the magnifying glass in the search field in the toolbar, and select
“Status”.
2. Click in the search field and type “To Do”. The binder will be replaced
by the regular purple search results list (with its associated “Search
Results” tab selected in the Collections pane above). You could check
with the Inspector and see that the status for each is marked “To Do”, as
you would expect, were the editor not locked.
3. Click on the magnifying glass in the search field again, and this time
select “Save Search as Collection…” from the bo om of the menu.
4. Enter a name for the search, e.g. “To Do” (it will use the search phrase
by default) and hit “OK”.
The search results will now change colour and you will see that a new tab
has appeared in the list of collections named “To Do”. Again, you can rename
this or change the colour to one of your choosing. The magnifying glass icon on
the left of the tab indicates that this is a search collection. These are different to
regular, “arbitrary” collections in that you can’t arbitrarily add documents to
them or move them around within the list of other search results. Instead, every
time you click on a search collection, the search gets run again.
Search collections can be used in various ways. You could use one to keep
track of the storyline of a character in a novel, to highlight documents that
contain a word you know you overuse, and so on. The “Search Results” tab is
itself really just a special type of search collection—it will always show the
results of the most recent search, even after you close and reopen the project.

Modifying the Contents of a Search Collection

Since search collections are dynamically generated each time you load
the tab, the contents cannot be shuffled around or removed from the list.
If you wish to have more control over the list, you can either convert the
search collection to an arbitrary collection, with View > Collections >
Convert to Standard Collection, or you can select all of the contents of
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Convert to Standard Collection, or you can select all of the contents of
the search collection, and click the “+” bu on to create a new arbitrary
collection off of your selection.

To delete a collection of any kind, just select its tab and then click on the “-”
bu on in the “Collections” bar. Deleting a collection has no effect on its
constituent documents—they are not deleted and remain in their place in the
binder.
There’s lots you can do with collections—or you don’t have to use them at
all. Like most things in Scrivener, they are available if you need them but can be
ignored if you don’t.
Click on the “Binder” tab to return to the standard project Binder view if
necessary. Let’s unlock the editor now. Click on the icon in the header view
again and this time de-select “Lock in Place”. At this point you can also click on
the “Collections” icon in the toolbar to hide the collections pane if you want.

Now it’s on to Part 3. Expand the Part 3 folder if it is collapsed, and then
click straight on “Step 14: Importing”.

If you decide Scrivener is the program for you, the first thing you are going to
want to do is import your existing work. This is simple. Just select the folder you
wish to import the files into, then go to File > Import > Files…, select the files
you wish to import, and click the “Import” bu on. If you wish to import
including subdirectories, maintaining the filing structure from File Explorer in
the binder, then drag & drop the folder into the Binder, instead. You can also
drag files from Scrivener’s binder out again to export.

Files Won’t Import?

Note that if you have selected a document that is contained inside the
“Draft” folder in the binder, when you go to File > Import > Files…
you will only have the option of importing text file types; this is because
files are imported at the location of the selection in the binder and the
“Draft” folder only supports text files. Thus, if you wish to import
media files, make sure that the selection is not in the “Draft” folder.

The following file types are supported by Scrivener’s import feature:

● RTF
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● DOC
● DOCX
● ODT
● TXT
● PDF
● Final Draft FDX
● HTML
● HTM
● OPML
● Most image files
● Windows media files (.wmv, .wav, .mp3 and .wma)
Note that you can also copy and paste content into Scrivener from any
source. If rich text forma ing is not critical it is recommended that you copy and
paste using Edit > Paste and Match Style (or Ctrl+Shift+V ). This method will
ensure that text pasted from other applications is cleaned and usable within
Scrivener, in much the same way that pasting text into Notepad and then back
out again would “clean” it of all forma ing.
It is important to note that some a ributes may be lost for certain document
types upon import.
It is also possible to import web archives (in PDF, MHT or plain-text
conversion) directly from the Internet by selecting Import > Web Page….
You can actually import any file at all—it doesn’t have to be one of the
supported formats listed above. If you import an unsupported file type, it will
appear in the editor as a link. Clicking on the link will open the file in the
program associated with it on your machine.
On to Step 15...
What if you want to use Scrivener but are worried about being locked in? The
Scrivener project folder format (the project is the entire contents of the folder
ending in “.scriv”) is unique, so what happens if you want to move your work
elsewhere? Fear not: you are not locked in at all. Simply select all of the files you
want to export in the binder (everything if you so wish) and then go to File >
Export > Files… Enter the name of the directory that will be created to hold all
of the files, choose your preferred text file format and whether you want to
include notes and meta-data in the export (which will include the synopses),
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then hit “Export”. All the selected files will be exported with the binder
structure intact; that is, the virtual folders in the binder will become actual
folders in File Explorer. You can even drag the selected documents from the
binder onto your desktop or File Explorer. All files in the Draft folder will be
exported as RTF and all the other files will simply be copied in their native
format.
That’s how you can get anything out of Scrivener. Generally, however, the
files you have inside a Scrivener project are there to support your writing—the
text you have been slaving over—writing, editing, cu ing up, rearranging—in
the Draft folder. The whole point of Scrivener is to produce that text, so at some
point you are going to want to export or print it as a single document or
manuscript.

To find out how, go to Step 16.

Quick Start Note: If you are only going through the “Quick Start” notes and
are eager to get up and running, you might want to skip this section and come
back to it later, as this is quite a long section. It is a very important section,
though, as it covers how to compile the contents of your Draft folder into a
single text for exporting and printing. So if you don’t want to read this now, be
sure to come back and read it before you need to export or print your work.

Scrivener’s purpose is to provide a sort of writer’s studio; a place where you

throw everything, all of your research, ideas and scribblings, with the aim of
mashing it together into a draft which you can then either print for posting off to
a publisher, or export, whether to another program for tweaking or to an e-book
format for self-publishing. This is where Scrivener’s Compile feature comes in.
The Compile feature takes everything that is in the Draft folder and
generates a single, forma ed document from it. You have complete control over
the output—you can choose from various file formats (or print directly from
Scrivener), you can choose whether to include document titles (or synopses and
notes for that ma er), set up a header and footer, and even completely change
the font and paragraph forma ing if you so desire—so there’s no need to write
in the same font you use for printing and exporting unless you want to.
“Compile…” can be found at the bo om of the File menu. Try selecting it
now, but then click “Cancel” and come back here.
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At first glance, it probably doesn’t look like much. This is because it is set
up by default to show only the most basic options—you can choose a preset
from the “Format As” pop-up bu on and a file format from the “Compile For”
bu on, then click on “Compile” to create a basic document containing the
merged contents of your Draft folder.
Let’s try that now—we’ll generate a PDF preview of the draft of this
tutorial project:
1. Go to File > Compile…
2. Ensure that “Original” is chosen for the “Format As” se ing.
3. Ensure “PDF (.pdf)” is selected next to “Compile For”.
4. Click on “Compile”.
5. Enter a destination and file name for the PDF and click Save.
6. Open the PDF produced by Scrivener.
You can choose from one of the other “Format As” presets to format your
draft differently. For instance, try compiling again, just as you did above, but
this time choose “Standard Manuscript Format” (be sure you choose “PDF
(.pdf)” from the “Compile For” list again, as changing the “Format As” option
can affect the selected file format). This time, you will find that the draft has
been compiled using a Courier 12-point font with double line-spacing.

Tip on Forma ing

Most of the presets in the “Format As” menu will apply different
forma ing to your manuscript—different fonts, different page se ings,
titles, separators and so on. If you find yourself ge ing frustrated when
trying to tweak the Compile se ings, or if you want to start from
scratch, it is often a good idea to select “Original” and start from there.
“Original” is set up so as not to override any of the forma ing—the
exported or printed manuscript will look just like the text in the main
editor. You can then work through the Compile options, se ing them
up as required.

That’s all you need to know for creating basic print-outs and exported files
from your draft. At some point, though, you may find that you want more
control over the document that gets produced. Try going back to the Compile
dialog and clicking on the expansion arrow:
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The Compile dialog will expand to show a whole raft of options. You don’t
really need to worry too much about all of these se ings at the moment—the
main thing to know is just that this is where you come to export or print your
entire manuscript, and that the Compile se ings provide complete control over
how your manuscript will be forma ed should you need it.
Let’s try a quick custom compile though (you may want to open up one of
the PDFs you compiled and jump to this section so you can follow along
without switching in and out of the compile window). This time, with the
compile dialog expanded to show all of the advanced options, try the following:
1. Choose “Original” from the “Format As” list again.
2. Take a look at the “Contents” pane. This allows you to choose which
documents get compiled. The drop-down menu at the top, which
currently says “Draft”, can be used to choose only a subfolder of the
Draft (so that you could compile and print only a single chapter, for
instance) or to choose the Quick Start collection or one of the collections
we created in Part 13 (so you can compile only the documents that
appear in a particular collection or search results). You can uncheck the
“Include” bu on for any document you don’t want included in your
compiled document. You can thus fine-tune which documents go into
your final manuscript.
All we’re going to do is click on the pop-up bu on at the top that
currently says “Draft”, and choose “Part 1: Basics”—that is, we are only
going to compile the “Part 1” folder.

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3. Now, from the list of se ings on the left, choose “Separators”. This
section allows us to choose how our documents should get stitched
together—whether we should put page breaks between the different
components or just line breaks and so forth. (Note: you can also insert
page breaks between documents by selecting “Page break before” for
individual documents in the “Contents” pane or the main editor
inspector. That is usually best used as a last resort, however—it’s
generally be er to set up page breaks in “Separators” if possible.)
a. For the “Text separator”, choose “Page break”.
b. For the “Folder and text separator”, choose “Single return”. This
will ensure that the text of any documents following a folder will be
added straight after the folder title—which we will now set up in
our forma ing options.
4. Click on “Forma ing”. This is the part of the Compile sheet that allows
you to choose how your text looks—what font it uses and suchlike. At the
top is a list with a folder, text group and text document in it, each saying
“Level 1+” next to them (text groups are just text documents that have
other text documents grouped inside them—have a look at “Step 5: The
Inspector” to see an example of one). Each document type can be
forma ed separately.
5. At the top of this pane you will see a checkbox labelled “Override text
and notes forma ing”. It is unchecked at the moment, which means that
the text (and notes should you choose to include them) of each document
will appear in your compiled manuscript exactly as they do in the editor,
just as they did the first time you compiled. We’re going to override the
forma ing, though, so click on this bu on to tick it.

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6. Click on the top item in the “Type” list, the “Level+” row with the folder
icon in it. Note that each row has tick boxes for “Title”, “Meta-Data”,
“Synopsis”, “Notes” and “Text”. These tick boxes determine which parts
of the document will get included in your text. So at the moment, only
the text of folder documents, text groups and text documents will be
included, because only the “Text” bu on is ticked for each. Let’s change
this. Click on the “Text” bu on in the folder row to remove “Text” and
then tick the “Title” bu on instead. Note how the text in the bo om pane
has changed to show the word “Title” in bold. This bo om text area
gives you a preview of what the document will look like, so in this case it
shows us what folder documents will look like when exported or printed
—they will show only their titles, in bold text.
a. Click into the bold “Title” text. Note how the ruler and forma ing
bar become active when you do so. Click on the centred text bu on,
and click on the “A” bu on to choose a different font. Make the font
big.
b. Above the forma ing bar, click on the “Page padding” stepper
control to change the page padding to “8 lines”. This will add eight
lines of blank space before the documents of the folder type
whenever they start on a new page. (You’ll see what I mean in a
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whenever they start on a new page. (You’ll see what I PruebaBorrar

mean in a
minute, they won’t show up in the preview area.)
7. Now, click on the next row, the one with a text group icon (the middle
choice), and tick the “Title” checkbox. Leave the “Text” checkbox ticked
for this one, though. The text area at the bo om will be updated to reflect
your changes.
a. Click in the bold title in the preview area. Get rid of the bold and
change it to underlined and italicised instead using the format bar,
and change its colour to blue using the colour control (right-click on
the ‘A ’ bu on on the right side of the format bar, next to the
highlighter pen to see a pale e with colour choices in it).
b. Click into the main text area and change the forma ing to whatever
you want—use the “A” bu on to change the font, the ruler to
change the paragraph indenting, and the line spacing control in the
format bar to change (who’d have thought it) the line spacing.
8. Click on the last row, the text icon with “Level 1+” next to it, and do the
same again, but this time choose a different format for the title and text.
9. Right, at last, click on the “Compile For” drop down and select
“Preview”. Then click “Compile” to open a preview.
Take a look through the preview document to see what you’ve done—
you’ve added titles and completely changed the way the text looks. Once you’re
happy with that, click the “Close” bu on to return to the Compile dialogue.
We’re just going to make one tweak, as follows:
1. Choose the “Forma ing” pane again.
2. Select the third row, the “Level 1+” with the single text icon next to it.
3. Click on the “Add forma ing level” bu on:

A “Level 2+” row will appear, slightly indented below the “Level 1” text
row. The “Level 1” row will no longer have the plus sign after it, either.
I’ll explain what this means in a moment. If you click between the “Level
1” and “Level 2+” rows, you will see that the forma ing in the text area
at the bo om is the same for each—that’s because the new forma ing
level is created using the same forma ing as the selected row by default.
4. Click on the “Add forma ing level” bu on again so that a “Level 3+”
row is created.
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5. With the “Level 3+” row is selected, click into the text area and change
forma ing to something glaring. Change the text colour to bright green
or suchlike.
6. Click on the “Compile” bu on again and once more view the results in
Preview mode, this time looking out for the green or lurid text
forma ing you added.
What just happened?
What you should have seen is that all documents contained inside the “Step 5:
The Inspector” group came out using your lurid forma ing, but everything else
stayed the same as the previous compile. Why? Because you can set up the
forma ing on a per-document-level basis if you like, and that’s what we just did.
If you look at the binder, the folders “Part 1: Basics” and so on are all contained
in the Draft folder at the first level—that is, they are one level deep in the Draft
folder. If you then look at “Step 1”, “Step 2” and so on, these are two levels deep
in the Draft folder, because they are contained inside the “Part 1” folder which
itself is contained in the Draft folder. “5a: The Synopsis Index Card” and the
other documents grouped inside the “Step 5: The Inspector” document are on
the third level. And so it was only these documents that were affected by our
“Level 3+” forma ing se ings. Incidentally, the “+” indicates that this is the last
level we have set up forma ing options for, and so it will be applied to any
levels of document in the Draft that go deeper (so if we’ve only set up two
forma ing levels, documents three or four deep in the binder will receive the
same forma ing as those at two levels deep).

Quick Start Note: If you’re viewing the “Quick Start” collection in the binder,
you’ll need to switch to the full binder to see the documents at their different
levels inside the Draft folder. Click the “Binder” tab to see this, then click back
on the “Quick Start” tab to return to viewing the collection.

Okay, onto the next section. Expand the “Part 4” folder and click on “Step
17: Split and Merge” (or go straight to Step 23 if you are only going through the
“Quick Start” sections).
Okay, so you imported all your work into Scrivener. But you had a lot of long
documents and now you want to chop them up so that you can experiment with
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moving the various parts around. No problem. The Documents menu features
Split > At Selection and Split > with Selection as Title. These features allow
you to chop up existing documents very easily and quickly. With “Split at
Selection”, you simply click inside a text document so that the cursor is at the
point where you want to split the document. Selecting this menu option will
split the document into two at the cursor point. Try pu ing the cursor at the
beginning of the next paragraph and doing that now.
You should see that your input focus has been moved to the Binder so you
can name this new chunk of text, and everything prior to the point above has
been removed from this document. Click on the prior document in the Binder,
and you’ll see the previous bit of text from before the split. Use the back bu on
to return here when you are done.

Sample Title
“Split with Selection as Title” works in much the same way, except you select a
range of text before clicking on it. The selected text will become the title of the
newly-created document. This is useful, for instance, if you have a long
document containing several chapters each with a title you want to use as the
document title. Try triple-clicking the “Sample Title” line above, and using the
Split > with Selection as Title menu command.
You can also merge documents. Selecting several documents in the binder
and then choosing Documents > Merge will merge the selected documents into
one. Select the top “Step 17…” item in the Binder, and then Shift-click on the
“Sample Title” document. Use Documents > Merge to join them back together.
A single empty line will be inserted in between each of the merged documents to
make it easier to see where the joins were.
Next we’ll look at some of the text options available in Scrivener. Click on
“Step 18” in the binder.

The Format Bar

The format bar runs horizontally just below the toolbar and allows you to access
common forma ing commands easily. From the format bar you can change the
font, text alignment, line spacing, text and highlight colour, and create lists. You
can turn the format bar on or off by choosing the Format > Format Bar menu
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Bar menu
command. Note that if you right-click (or click and hold) the text colour or
highlight bu ons in the format bar, a menu will appear that allows you to
choose from a selection of colours (clicking on the bu ons directly applies the
currently-selected colour). You can customise what appears in the format bar
with the Tools > Customize Toolbars… menu command.

The Format Menu

The Format menu provides various ways of forma ing your text which are
standard in many applications along with some that are unique to Scrivener, the
la er of which are listed below.

Highlight
Pre y straightforward, this one. Choose from several standard highlighter pen
colours to highlight your text.

Inline Annotation And Footnotes

Inline annotations and footnotes allow you to make notes right inside your
text.They look like this:
This text has a footnote after it.3 When the text is compiled, exported or printed,
this footnote will be turned into a “real” footnote (or endnote).

Each was created by selecting the text and choosing either “Inline
Annotation” or “Inline Footnote” from the Format menu. Alternatively, you can
also just choose “Inline Annotation” or “Inline Footnote” with no selection and
start typing (note that you can change the colour of an annotation in the
Appearance tab of Tools > Options...). When you export your work, ranges of
text defined as footnotes can be turned into real RTF footnotes that can be read
by Word, OpenOffice.org, WordPerfect and other major word processors.
Ranges of text defined as annotations can be turned into RTF comments (which
Word can read) or omi ed altogether. One thing to note is that when you create
inline footnotes, the grey bubble should start exactly where you want the
footnote marker to appear in the printed or exported text. Just think of the whole
bubble as being the number in the final text.

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Scrivener Links
Scrivener links are much like web hyperlinks, except that they link to other
documents within the current Scrivener project. To create a Scrivener link, select
the name of the document to which you wish to make a link from the Scrivener
Links menu in the Edit menu. This will create a hyperlink in your text
document. Alternatively, choose “New Link…” to bring up a dialogue box that
allows you to create a new document to which to link, or to choose from existing
documents in the project. Clicking on a Scrivener link will open the linked
document in a split pane. Scrivener links can be useful for creating tables of
contents or references within your research.
Try clicking on the Scrivener link below:
Spacewalk Info

A PDF document will be opened in a new pane. Close the split pane and
then move on to “Step 19” in the binder.
As you have learned, by default any new Scrivener project will have three root
folders—the Draft, Research and Trash folders. These folders cannot be deleted
or moved into other folders (although they can be moved into a different order).
You’re not limited to having only these three main folders, though—you can
create as many as you need. Let’s try that now:
1. Lock the editor again so that this document stays on screen (by clicking
on the icon in the header view and selecting “Lock in Place” from the
menu that appears).
2. Click on the Research folder.
3. Click on the “Add folder” bu on in the footer bar right at the bo om of
the binder (or hit Ctrl+Shift+N ).
4. Note that a new folder is created inside the “Research” folder. Rename
the new folder “Characters”.
5. From the Documents menu, choose Move > Left. Your new folder is
now a root folder—that is, it is now as far left as it can go, on the same
level as the Draft, Research and Trash folders
So, we’ve created a new root-level folder, but at the moment it looks fairly
generic. This is where Scrivener’s custom icons feature comes in—you can

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assign a custom icon to any file or folder in the binder so that its purpose is more
immediately recognisable. In our example, we are going to use our new folder to
store notes about different characters in a novel, so we want to assign an icon to
it that will allow us to find it easily and quickly. Here’s how:
1. Right-click on the “Characters” folder.
2. Select “Change Icon” from the contextual menu that appears. Choose
the “Character Sheet” icon from from the “Characters” group (although
you could just as easily choose any icon).
3. Or, hold down the Alt key while right-clicking to directly access the
custom icon menu.
A number of icons are provided with Scrivener for use in your projects, but
you can also create your own (or download some) and import them by choosing
“Manage Icons…” from the Documents > Change Icon menu.
In this way you can customise your projects to contain whatever main
folders you need (note that you can assign custom icons to individual
documents, too, but the feature is more likely to be useful for customising folder
icons). If you create a Scrivener project from one of the templates that are
provided (such as the novel template), you will find folders in the binder that
have been created and customised in just this way.
Unlock the editor and move on to Step 20.

One of the key philosophies behind Scrivener is that it shouldn’t try to force you
into a particular workflow. You should be able to write any sort of long-form
text in Scrivener and set up your project to fit the task at hand. Likewise, if
you’re using Scrivener to write a novel, Scrivener doesn’t automatically assume
that you must therefore want character sheets to fill in for each character, or
prompt sheets for information about locations and so on (I apologise for the
fiction-biased examples). Every writer is different—some novelists find filling in
character sheets an essential part of their process, others dislike such things. So,
just as Scrivener allows you to create top-level folders and customise their icons,
it also gives you the means to set up document templates for generating things
such as character sheets. Document templates allow you to set up a document in
the project and use it as the basis for creating new documents.
(Note: Document templates should not be confused with project templates.
A project template is something you pick from the New Project panel, which is
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used as the basis for creating an entire project—see Step 21—whereas a
document template is a file inside a project.)
This probably sounds more complicated than it is in practice, so let’s take a
look at how document templates appear and work in a project.
Go to the Project menu and hover over “New From Template”. When a
project has document templates, they’re listed here so you can quickly create a
new document using the template. All we see now is the placeholder menu item
saying “No Templates Folder set”—this project doesn’t yet have any document
templates or a folder assigned to hold them. You’ll see the same sub-menu if you
click the down-arrow beside the green “Add” bu on in the toolbar and check the
“New From Template” menu there.
Let’s create a couple of document templates to populate these menus. For
this step, you may want to split the editor so you can follow along while keeping
this reference up to the side. (Remember, selecting a document in the binder will
load it in the editor with the blue header. You may need to click into the editor
you want to change before following steps to click in the binder. To avoid
accidentally replacing this document, choose “Lock In Place” from the icon
menu in this split’s header.)
Se ing Up Document Templates
Take a look inside the Research folder in the binder (expand it if necessary by
clicking on the disclosure triangle next to it). Inside it you will find a “Sheets”
folder, which contains two documents—“Character Sheet” and “Location
Sheet”. Take a look at these documents. They contain text that could be used for
very basic character or location sheets, which you might fill in for each character
or location you are going to write about in a novel. They are just regular text
documents, though—you can have whatever you want in there. To see what I
mean, select the “Location” document and then click on “Add” in the toolbar so
that a new blank document gets created. Name it to anything you want, and
then type something inside the document.
Now we’re going to tell Scrivener that the documents inside the “Sheets”
folder should be treated as document templates—that is, that we want to be able
to create new documents based on them:
1. Click on the “Sheets” folder to select it.
2. Go to the Project menu and choose “Set Selection as Templates Folder”.

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After turning the “Sheets” folder into a Document Template folder.

The icon of the “Sheets” folder will change to be a white “T” against a
blueprint, and the “T” will appear in the corner of each document inside the
folder. This indicates that the folder is now acting as the templates folder and
that anything inside it can be used as the basis for a new document. (Note that
once you have set a templates folder, the “Set Selection as Templates Folder”
item in the Project menu will change to “Clear Templates Folder”. Since each
project can only have one templates folder, if you want to change the templates
folder in the future, you will need to use this to reset things before “Set Selection
as Templates Folder” becomes available again.)
Using Document Templates
What does this mean? Let’s try returning to the menus we looked at a li le
earlier:
1. Click on the “Characters” folder with the custom icon that you created in
step 19. It should currently be empty.
2. Go to the Project menu and select “New From Template” again. You’ll
notice that it’s no longer empty—it shows the contents of the “Sheets”
templates folder.
3. From the menu, select “Character Sheet”. A new document will be
created inside the “Characters” folder—a document that is identical to
the “Character Sheet” document in the templates folder. Change the title
and edit the text in the document itself.
4. Now click on the down-arrow beside the green “Add” bu on again. This
time there will be more items in the sub-menu—the contents of our
templates folder is there, too. Select the item you created previously. You
should see the text you typed in appear in the editor. Anything you had
done to this item beforehand would have been copied over (excluding
snapshots, so you can store copies of older versions of your templates
without them ge ing in the way).
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The two new documents you just created are copies of the documents in the
templates folder. And that’s really all the templates folder is—somewhere for
you to put documents that you want to use as the basis for other documents, and
which, in combination with the New From Template menu, makes it very easy
to create copies of those documents anywhere you want in the project.
We’re nearly there. If you split the editor, go ahead and close it now, and
unlock this editor if needed. Then on to Step 21…

At this point, we’ve covered all of the major features of Scrivener. If you haven’t
done so already, then soon you are going to want to create your own project so
that you can start work. Generally you will want a separate Scrivener project for
each writing project you are working on. To create a new project, select “New
Project…” from the File menu, which will open the project template chooser
panel. From there, you can choose a project type from one of the categories
(novel, screenplay, essay and so on). Once you’ve done so, give the new project a
name in the “Save As” field, below the thumbnail browser. You may also want
to change where the project will be saved by clicking the Browse bu on, or
selecting a common location from the “Where” drop-down menu. Click the
Create bu on to create and open the project (you can have more than one
project open at once, so you can leave this tutorial project open in the
background).
Scrivener project folders end in “.scriv” which might seem a li le strange.
This is to maximise the cross-platform compatibility of the project (when viewed
on a Mac, the folder will look and act like a single file). You will need to open
Scrivener projects by double-clicking on the main project folder and then
double-clicking the project document in that folder (if you have File Explorer set
up to show extensions, it is the one with the “.scrivx” extension). That file is not
your entire project; it is the master control file that keeps track of all the pieces. If
you wish to copy your project to another computer or back it up, make sure to
send the whole folder ending in .scriv. You can also open projects using the File
> Open… command, or if you’ve worked on the project recently, it might be
listed in the File > Recent Projects sub-menu.
Note that the “Blank” project type is the basis for all other project types.
That is, all the other project templates were created by starting from a blank
project, adding some documents and changing the se ings relevant for the

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project type, and then saving the resulting project as a template. If you find that
none of the existing templates is quite right for the sort of writing you do, you
can create your own project templates in the same way, like this:
1. Create a new project—either from the Blank template or from any other
template—and edit it so that it contains all the elements and se ings you
will want in a new project whenever it is created from your template.
This can be as simple as you like, maybe just a few tweaks to Blank.
2. Select “Save As Template…” from the File menu.
3. From the “Save As Template” dialog that appears, enter a title and
description for the new template, and choose a category and icon, then
click on “OK”.
4. Go to File > New Project… You will find the template you just created
available as the basis for new projects. At this point you can delete the
project from which you created the template, if you wish. Since projects
are just folders of files, close the project in Scrivener and then use File
Explorer to delete the project’s folder (”[ProjectName].scriv”).
Next on to “Step 22: Syncing with iOS” - you’ll find that in the “Part 6”
folder.

(You can skip this section if you don’t plan on syncing projects with Scrivener for
iOS.)
Scrivener is also available for the iPad and iPhone (via the iOS App Store),
so that you can work on your projects anywhere. Follow the instructions below
to sync your projects with our iOS version. Note that you will need a Dropbox
account (h p://www.getdropbox.com) to sync. If you don’t have or want a
Dropbox account, you can copy projects via iTunes or third-party device file
managers (see below).

Syncing With Dropbox

1. Any projects you want to share with the iOS version must be placed in
your Dropbox folder. When you set up sync in Scrivener for iOS, you
are asked to choose a subfolder inside Dropbox, and the iOS version will
sync anything inside the folder you choose. The default se ing is
Dropbox\Apps\Scrivener, so we’ll use that as our example. We’ll
assume the folder already exists in Dropbox (it will do if you’ve set up
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 assume the folder already exists in Dropbox (it will do if you’ve set up
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sync in the iOS version—follow the instructions in the iOS tutorial for
details on that if necessary).
2. To sync an existing project, first make sure it is closed on your PC, then
move the entire project folder (ending in “.scriv”) into the
Dropbox\Apps\Scrivener folder in File Explorer. You can then open it
again on your PC from its new location in Dropbox if you wish.
3. To create a new project that you want available on iOS, go to File > New
Project, select a project template, and choose to save it inside the
Dropbox\Apps\Scrivener folder when prompted for a save location.
4. Before opening a project on iOS, ensure that Dropbox on your PC has
fully synced (check that there is no activity indicator in the Dropbox icon
in the system tray; we recommend you set the Dropbox tray icon to
always show).
5. Whenever you have made any changes to projects on your PC, be sure to
tap the sync bu on in Scrivener for iOS so that all changes get
downloaded.
6. Edit your project on your iPhone or iPad and tap the sync bu on in the
iOS version when you’re done.
7. When returning to your PC, once more ensure that Dropbox has
finished syncing by checking the icon in the menu bar.
8. You can now carry on working on your project. You are free to leave
your Scrivener projects open on the computer while editing them on
iOS. When Scrivener for Windows detects that changes have been made
with the iOS version, it will tell you that it needs to incorporate those
changes into the project. It will then do so, closing and reopening the
project. (If the project was closed, it will do all of this when you next
open the project.)
9. Scrivener for Windows detects changes whenever it becomes active. If
you know you’ve made changes on iOS and Scrivener on the PC doesn’t
tell you about them, simply choose Sync > with Mobile Devices from
the File menu. This will force Scrivener to check for any changes.
● Note that “Sync > with Mobile Devices” just looks for changes
that have been made to the current project on iOS devices. No
changes will be found if the project has not been edited on iOS, or if
it is not stored in the Dropbox folder.
Dealing with Conflicts
When syncing across devices, it’s important
51 to remember that each device stores
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When syncing across devices, it’s important to remember that each device stores
its own copy of the project (if it didn’t, you wouldn’t be able to access projects
without an Internet connection). When you sync, Scrivener updates the copy on
your PC and the copy on your iOS device (when next you sync it) so that they
are both the same. If you make edits to the same document on more than one
device without syncing, however, conflicts may arise because the two copies will
be different.
For instance, suppose you edit a scene on your iPad, then return to your
computer without syncing and start editing the same scene—in this case, there
will now be two different versions of it, one on your iPad, and one on your
computer. When this occurs, on the next sync, Scrivener will tell you that
conflicts have been found. Scrivener will always do its best to resolve all conflicts
without requiring you to do anything, but in a case like this, it will create a
“Conflicts” folder at the bo om of the binder and place one of the versions of the
document inside it as a separate document.
If this happens, be sure to compare the two versions of the document and
decide which one you want to keep. You can open Scrivener’s split screen
feature to look at them side-by-side and copy between them, and then delete the
one you do not need. This won’t normally be a problem, however—it will only
happen if you make changes to the same project on two devices without syncing
before moving between devices.

Copying Between Devices Using iTunes

If you have the iOS version but don’t want to use Dropbox, you can copy
projects to and from your iPhone or iPad using iTunes as follows:
1. Open iTunes and connect with your device.
2. Select the device you wish to update.
3. Select “Apps” in the sidebar.
4. Scroll down to “File Sharing”.
5. Select Scrivener in the “Apps” list.
6. Click the “Add…” bu on in iTunes and select your Scrivener project
folder (ending in “.scriv”) using the file dialog box. This will add the
project to the “Documents” list in iTunes (you may also be able to drag
and drop projects in and out of the list).
7. Select a project in the “Documents” list and click on “Save to…” to copy
a project from your device to your PC’s hard drive.
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Any third-party tool capable of managing files on your iOS device can
substitute for iTunes. You will need to consult the instructions for your preferred
software.
Important: some file management tools may merge a project folder when
copying a project into a location where a project by that same name already
exists. Merging should never be done. If necessary, delete or rename the older
version of the project first, and then copy the updated version of the project so
that it creates the project from scratch.
Okay, on to Step 23, the “And Finally…” bit.
This has been a fairly thorough tour of all of the main features of Scrivener (or
not so thorough if you only went through the “Quick Start” documents, but
enough to get you up and running, I hope). You probably won’t use half of the
features you’ve just learned for some time—in fact, on a daily basis, you will
probably only use the most basic features of writing in the editor, creating new
documents, and moving documents around in the binder. Everything in
Scrivener gets out of your way until you need it—but at least you know what’s
available and have a good idea of what you can do.
There’s plenty of other stuff in there, too. For instance, I neglected to
mention the project targets and statistics features in the Project menu, which you
may well use frequently if you need to write to a particular length. They are
fairly self-explanatory, though, so just try them out.
What else? Well, once again, remember that Scrivener expects you to put
everything that you want to export as part of your manuscript (okay, typescript
for the pedants) inside the Draft folder. And remember that Scrivener is really
about “hammering out” that draft; it is not a word processor or full page layout
program, so at some point—unless you just want a very basic manuscript—you
may well want to move your work into a word processor or dedicated
scriptwriting program for final forma ing.
Experiment! You should be able to work out the rest by playing with the
program. If you get stuck, be sure to check out the comprehensive Scrivener
Manual from the Help menu. Note that it is a PDF, so while you are learning
the program you might consider importing it into your working project binder’s
research section for easy access. If you still have a problem, check out the
knowledge base, or take a look at some of our tutorial videos on the web page:
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h p://scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb
h p://www.literatureandla e.com/videos.php
And of course, if you are still baffled, post a question on the user forums!

h p://www.literatureandla e.com/forum
Likewise, if you encounter any bugs or glitches, no ma er how small—and
especially if you experience a crash—please post to the forums or e-mail us at
windows.support@literatureandla e.com.
We hope you enjoy using Scrivener and find it a useful tool, and offer our
heartfelt thanks to you for choosing Scrivener (or considering it) as the tool for
your own writing.

Next Steps
You are now ready to begin your own project—go to File > New Project to get
going. Happy writing!

Saving
A very important aspect of a program such as Scrivener is how it saves
documents. Scrivener auto-saves so that you don’t have to worry about saving at
all if you don’t want to. That said, if you’re anything like me, “not worrying”
about saving is an impossibility, so here is how things work: every time you
make a change to a document, the name of your project in the Windows title bar
will have an asterisk (*) placed after it to indicate that there are unsaved changes.
At this point, Scrivener knows that it needs to save as soon as possible. It does
so as soon as there is no activity for two seconds or more (although you can
change the amount of time it waits in the “General” tab in Options)—that way,
saving a large document will not interrupt what you are doing. It also checks
whether it needs to save when a project is closed and when you quit the
application, and saves if so. Once things are saved, the asterisk is removed from
the Windows title bar.
Although the auto-save feature keeps your work safe 99.99999% of the time,
and while I hope you never experience any crashes, every program has the
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and while I hope you never experience any crashes, every programPruebaBorrar
has the
occasional bug lurking around, so for the sake of your—and my—own sanity,
there is a “force save” feature. This just works the same way as a normal save in
a regular app. Hit Ctrl+S or go to File > Save to force any changes you have
made to be saved without having to wait the two seconds for an auto-save. Note
that because of the auto-save feature, if you close a project while the asterisk is in
the title bar, you will not be asked whether you want to save your changes, as
many programs do, because the changes will be saved automatically.

Writing Multiple Books In The Same Project

Generally, Scrivener is set up based on the assumption that each Scrivener
project will contain a single book (or writing project). When you compile, you
compile the entire Draft folder into a single manuscript. In the section on
Compile, though, we briefly looked at how you can choose to compile only a
subfolder of the Draft. If you really want to write more than one book in the
same project - perhaps you have a series of books that rely on the same research,
for instance - you can easily do so by taking advantage of this feature. Here’s
how:
1. Set up a different folder for each book inside the Draft folder.
2. Organise each book folder as though it were the Draft folder for that book.
3. In the “Contents” pane of Compile, choose the folder containing the book
you wish to compile from the pop-up bu on above the list of documents.

Layouts
If you find yourself opening and closing the binder and inspector frequently, or
spending a lot of time se ing up the corkboard or outliner view to appear in the
right place for a particular task, check out the Layouts feature, which can be
accessed by selecting “Layout Manager…” from the Window > Layouts menu.
This allows you to save the state of the interface and quickly return to it at a later
time.

Scratch Pad
If you have to gather a lot of research in other applications and find yourself
doing a lot of copying and pasting into Scrivener, the Scratch Pad may be
useful. The scratch pad is a tool that can be called up with the Tools > Scratch
Pad menu command (Ctrl+Shift+0). You can then paste or type any notes into it
and send them to one of your open projects straight away or at some point later
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(Scratch Pad notes are saved in a folder on your hard drive that you can specify
in the “General” tab of Options).

Backing Up Your Work

Back Up To... (available from the File > Back Up menu) is your friend... Use it
frequently to save copies of your project (you can save copies as archived .zip
files, too) to ensure that your work is always backed up. You can also set up
your projects to be backed up automatically whenever they are opened or closed,
using the “Backup” tab of Options.

File Format
Just a quick note on the file format, by the way: Scrivener projects are actually
folders on your disk with a number of files inside of them. The entire folder with
a name ending in “.scriv” (for example, if you saved your tutorial as “Tutorial”
there will be a “Tutorial.scriv” folder where you chose to save it). If you drill
into one of those folders, you will (reassuringly, I hope) discover that all of your
work is actually stored as multiple RTF and XML files inside various
subfolders. This means that even in the worst possible crash case, if a .scriv
project became hopelessly corrupted (although I hope this will never happen),
you would still be able to open and edit all of your work in another program
(such as Word). That said, you should not edit the RTF files inside a .scriv
package in any other program if you intend to keep using them inside Scrivener,
as this may cause problems with Scrivener’s footnotes, comments, links and
search features. Use the File > Export > Files… feature if you want to get your
files out of Scrivener.

Working With Cloud Services

Many users these days work across multiple machines and use a cloud service
such as Dropbox to sync their files between computers. This is entirely possible
with Scrivener files, but because of Scrivener’s file format structure, there are
some gotchas that you need to bear in mind when working with Scrivener
projects stored on Dropbox or other cloud services. We have an article in our
Knowledge Base containing everything you need to know on this subject here:
h p://scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/cloud-syncing/using-scrivener-
with-cloud-sync-services
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1 This is a footnote. In order for footnotes to get exported properly, it’s important to add them in
such a way that the link ends exactly as you want the footnote to appear in the exported or
printed text.
2 Esto es una prueba de nota al pie
3 This is a footnote.

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