025 looks great and acts great, too, for the most part. I’ve found one problem, and it’s something I’ve also experienced with some of earlier betas.
Cannot import .doc files on my 32-bit Win Vista laptop. Not with the Import function on the File menu, not with drag-and-drop. I can import .rtf files, but for .doc files, the Import dialogue box opens, and seconds later a blank file appears in the Binder, with whatever title I’ve given it in the center of the screen but with none of the actual text.
BUT I CAN import .doc files on my 32-bit Win 7 notebook with no problem, both through the Import function and by drag-and-drop. So it’s not that I can’t figure out how to import. It’s that I can’t figure out why I can do it on one machine and not the other.
Both were clean installs after uninstalling previous versions.
Not sure if this is a bug or something weird that’s just afflicting me, but thanks for any suggestions,a and thank you again for making Scrivener available to those of us who toil in PCville.
No, this is a bug that seems to be inconsistently affecting people. It sounds like what’s happening is that on the Vista machine, Scrivener isn’t recognizing the .doc as a supported file type. What version of Word do you have installed on each of your machines? That may have something to do with it; worth noting down, anyway.
I’m having the .doc import problem as well, and I’m on a 32 bit system. I primarily use the windows/wine version, so it’s not just a vista thing. (I’m still in XP compatibility mode, although it does the same in Vista or Windows 7 compatibility mode. For what it’s worth, this was a doc file made by Open Office/Libre Office. It’s not working with the linux native version, either. (Same file in all 3 tests.)
Thanks for the info. I didn’t mean to indicate it was a Vista problem, just identifying the machine. This has happened for users on a few different systems–I’ll add yours to the mix. Interesting point about the the .doc being created outside of Word; some other issues have been with .doc files created in older versions of Word, hence part of the speculation about there being an issue due to the version of Word that’s currently installed on the computer (as Scrivener makes use of this to convert the files). That said, .doc/.docx will only import correctly if Word is installed, but this issue is happening for users that do have Word installed so there’s still a bug in there somewhere.
So what happens if someone sends me a .doc file and I try to import it into Scrivener and I don’t have Word installed? (which I don’t) Will I get a nice dialog that tells me that because I don’t have Word installed, the import is not possible, or does the import simply fail with some obscure system error message, or does Scrivener crash, or… something else?
I do have LibreOffice. Would that make any difference?
Those of us without Word (at least this particular “those of us”) would be interested to know what will happen to the import when Word is not installed.
Oh hey, what you could do is open the file up in Libre Office, save to rtf or PDF and import that. LO does docx now, I believe. (Haven’t updated it since the early days because I use Scrivener more. )
At the moment, it will import as an unsupported file type, which means that it won’t import into the Draft folder but you can pull it in anywhere else; however, since it’s unsupported, you won’t be able to see or edit the text in Scrivener and would need to view it in an external editor, so it’s basically like using project references to link to the file (only the file is actually copied to the project folder). Not super handy, but I’m just saying that’s how it is now. No crash, but there’s not a message specifically about it either. Drag and drop is disallowed, so you have to do it via “Import” and choosing “All Files”, which is a little tip-off that Scrivener doesn’t recognize the extension.
That will change so that there is a clear message about it, but Lee’s still working on getting .doc import to work without needing Word installed so hopefully there won’t be much of a warning required. Certainly agreed that .doc import without Word installed is the goal, it’s just a matter of implementing it–not as easy as one could wish. Meanwhile, as garpu suggested, if you have another program like LibreOffice or OpenOffice, converting the file to .rft and importing that is the best workaround.
Thanks for the response (same to everyone else who replied).
In my original post that started this thread I neglected to say that I don’t have Word or Microsoft Office installed on either of my computers. I’ve been using Open Office for years, saving my text files in .doc because that’s what my publisher and everyone else wants.
.doc files created in Open Office import to Scrivener on my Win 7 netbook but not on my Vista laptop, if that’s useful.
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