Hi all. I am adding selected scenes from the binder to a collection, and it would be great to be able to check at a glance, while looking at the binder, whether a given scene is in that collection. I’m using labels at present but that relies on me doing it manually and I could make a mistake and miss one. Any ways to have this show up automatically? Thanks very much!
One way would be to reverse your workflow…
Add the labels to items in the binder that you want to be in a collection, and then set up a collection that is made up of all the items that have that label (ie is based on a search for that label and will auto update whenever the label is added or removed from a doc in the binder).
It’s not quite what you wanted, but it would mean you wouldn’t have any accidental disconnect (gaps or false positives).
If the collection already exists, you can Select All in the collection view, apply the label, and then make the label visible in the Binder.
1 Like
Thanks, yes that is what I started with, but then I realised I can’t change the order of the docs in a search based collection. I’m using the collection as a way to select and order scenes for a final version.
1 Like
Oh, thanks, that should do it, actually. If I clear all the labels in the binder, then only docs in that collection will show labels. Brilliant, thank you!
You don’t even have to clear all labels, just use a highly visible color for the one applied to the collection.
1 Like
Incidentally, you can convert a Search Collection to a standard Collection. In the Search Collection, Select All, then use the Documents → Add to Collection command.
Thanks! That’s a great tip.
By the way, there is in fact a tool for looking up which collections an item is listed in (including search collections). Right-click on the editor header bar icon[1] and hover over the “Reveal in Collection” entry, toward the top of the menu. You can of course at that point select the collection to jump to it, with this item selected in the sidebar, after switching (or just dismiss the menu).
P.S. I’ve moved this to the Mac section, as this function is still not implemented in the Windows version.
Refer to §8.1.1, under subheading, Header Bar Contextual Menu, for where this is, and the documentation on this function. ↩︎
Thanks, that’s great to know, I’ll check it out. Also sorry I didn’t realise I’d put this in the Windows side – I am using a Mac as it happens!
I don’t suppose there’s any way to make the collections a document belongs to a metadata item in outline view…?
Oh no worries, it was filed to the general Scrivener discussion area. I just moved it because the solution is Mac-only.
As for making this a column in the outliner, that wouldn’t be feasible, unfortunately, with the way it currently works anyway. You’ll notice what I mean in larger projects with a lot of search collections, but pulling up that menu requires each search to run in sequence, as they aren’t cached in the background. This can cause a notable delay, and thus doing so for a large number of items in the outliner list would quickly make the view unusable.
It’s definitely worth creating a custom metadata field for things that would benefit from an overview like the outliner gives you, rather than using collections. You can still have the collection, pulling from that custom metadata as a search result.
1 Like
Brilliant! Thanks very much!