Hello, I’ve been using Scrivener on my Mac for a long time now and enjoy it very much.
Now I use my iPad to write on Scrivener when traveling. These are singular files (like for a blogpost or an article), not whole projects.
I used Airdrop to share a recent file to my Mac–and ended up sharing as a Word doc because I didn’t see “.scriv” in the format choices. Is there a better choice for file type when I do this–to more easily add it into my Scrivener on MacOS? (Choices: PDF, Word, RTF, Plain text). I don’t want to use dropbox.
Thanks!
Since Scrivener’s native format is RTF use that or plain text. If formatting is not an issue, I’d use plain text, because when imported into your Scriv project it will use the default formatting of the project; if you use RTF, you might end up having to spend time getting styles the same on each platform. Although a .scriv looks like a file on the Mac, it is actually a package, potentially containing thousands of files, so it isn’t a format like RTF, etc. that you can use to share.
Are you using Scrivener for iOS? If so, have you read the Knowledge Base article on alternative methods of sync’ing?
Mark
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A Scrivener project is not a single file. It’s a folder, with subfolders and potentially hundreds of component files.
If you only want to share a single document from your project, then Word or RTF is probably the way to go. RTF is Scrivener’s native format.
If you want to share an entire project, read this article:
https://scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb/ios/guide-to-keeping-ios-projects-backed-up
If you want ongoing synchronization between your iPad and your Mac, start with the “Syncing” section of the iOS Scrivener tutorial project.
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Very helpful. I wasn’t sure what RTF was. And yes, I’m using Scrivener for iOS.
I’ll check out the knowledge base article.
Thank you.
Thank you for your help!
For AirDrop specifically, there is a section in the user manual on that, in §14.2.1, under subheading, Using AirDrop to Transfer Projects. There are checklists for sending projects both to and from the mobile device, though do note the yellow tip box that describes a workaround. We do declare “.scriv” as being a format we support loading from AirDrop, but the system may not recognise that claim. It’s a simple matter to save it directly into Scrivener’s storage folder once you select Files as the target, though.
In short though it works fine! I’ve used it for years. It’s a little slower to send than zipping it first and only transferring the .zip file over WiFi, but on the other hand you don’t have to zip and unzip after copying. So that trick is mainly only beneficial for projects a very large quantity of internal files. Modern WiFI is fast.
Sadly, my experience with AirDrop has been less positive.
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In my experience airdrop reliability is highly dependent on the relative ages of your devices and OSs. Once one (device or OS) gets a bit behind the other, it[1] all starts to get spotty.
[1] and by “it” I mean airdrop itself, not Scriv or Scriv’s use of it.
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Thanks, Amber. This is very helpful.