I’m starting to consider using Scrivener to write my academic papers, but I’ve recently run into something that doesn’t quite work the way I think it should.
When I cut/copy and paste from a table into another table, it inserts another table into one cell of the table that I pasted into, rather than spreading out what was in the rows/columns into the rows/columns where I’m pasting.
Is this a bug, or a feature that hasn’t been implemented for some reason? I’m not sure how much coding that would take, so if it’s too much I understand, though it is a bit frustrating when I realize that I need to shift some stuff over a bit and need to re-type it all.
The poor table support is one of the weakness of Scrivener, otherwise a simple but powerful text editing tool.
It’s my opinion that the highest priority has the addition of a row copy- and paste operation, which should not be related with the text copy- and paste. Instead it should be added to the table menu, already supporting row creation and deletion operations.
I think Numbers, Excel, Pages or dare I say it, Microsoft Word (or their open source equivalents) probably would be better apps for working with tables…
Yes, in principle I agree. I understand, promote, and like the “keep it simple” philosophy of Scrivener, that is a highly appreciated feature, not a bug! But even simple tables must be editable in a simple way, and copying/pasting of rows is a simple but required operation on tables, it is just a completion of an already available set of table editing operations.
Of course Scrivener should not inherit all the overloaded stuff form Word/Excel, just to be complete on its own.
Is it practical for you to convert to writing in MultiMarkDown in Scrivener? I ask because while the tables aren’t pretty in scrivener, they come out of the MMD compile outputs looking great.
I don’t know if it will be any easier to use tables this way, but you might want to take a look at MMD just to see if it works better for you.
I require multi-line table cells, and using MMD text table formatting is really annoying for this purpose (and MMD doesn’t support multi-line cells, which must be wrapped in HTLM P/DIV tags, make it much more unclean).
I use Scrivener tables just as an input form without any necessity of formatting (of the table, like cell width or border rulings), but the cell formatting look&feel and organizing is vital for multi-line cell input and my purpose (software documentation).
I purchased scrivener a few hours ago and I like it very much, but the first thing that annoys me is the bad table support.
[] Resizing cells doesn’t work properly.
[] Adjusting the borders is not really possibly.
[*] Borders look messed up when compiling to pdf.
Nobody wants Scrivener to have the functionality of Excel, but basic functionality would be nice. This might not be very relevant for novelists, but can be essential for non-fiction writers.
On both platforms, Scrivener is dependent on the table abilities of the text engines they are built on (Qt for Windows; Apple text engine for Mac). I’m sure Keith and LAP+Tiho would love to have better table support but as a team of 3 working across the board, it would be difficult to roll out their own table code, especially as there are so many other developments needed.
Yes, we do agree that tables aren’t optimal, but they are provided by Apple code (for Mac) and Qt for Windows (I think they are part of the Qt engine, at least, I’d have to check with Lee). On the Mac, you can see the same tables in TextEdit. Unfortunately Apple hasn’t made any improvement to the tables since Tiger. But Apple’s table code not only provides the interface, but also the routines that export the tables to (and import them from) RTF, Word and HTML (and therefore e-books). Replacing the existing table UI, therefore, is not only a matter of writing our own code for tables in the editor (a huge task in itself), but also of replacing the import and export code for tables from and to other formats. (The current tables on the Mac also work and display in the iOS version, which is another advantage.) In other words, it’s a huge job that would take several months of coding for one person. This is why it remains on the list of something we would like to do at some point, but is not something we have been able to do yet.
Currently if you mark cells Scriviner thinks in lines not in cells on tables. If you could improve the way cells get marked it would give a huge improvement. Since I do not have to go over all formats cell by cell.
And if you could extend the Rightclick menue with all the table features it would also help.
Maybe both suggestions can be done without replaceing the hole Code.
Imho if I could utilized a cell based selection and select then the feature I want via right click it improves a lot in the workflow. Of course I am not familiar with the Table lib from apple.
So I do not know if that is possible at all, but even a small improvement would be awesome.
Hello.
As I already said in other post, i think that tables features in Scriverner should be a specific an complete tool like Scapple.
Tables are fundamental in most of academic works. I don’t understand as yet has not been improved a fundamental tool of a program that, in my opinion, is almost perfect.
Sorry but is neccesary to say this very clear: “Is very, very annoying to create and desing tables in Scrivener”.
Thank you.
PD: When i said “specific tool for Scrivener” i want to say a specific plug-in that let insert a table object in Scrivener like Adobe table in pagemaker.
I do appreciate that tables aren’t perfect in Scrivener, but we rely on Apple’s implementation here (they are the same as the ones in TextEdit. As explained above, the trouble is that not only is replacing them in the text very difficult and resource-intensive, but it would also mean trying to hack the Apple code we use for exporting to HTML (and thus e-books), RTF (and thus Word) and many other formats. So, although we’d love to improve table support in the future, unfortunately it’s just not feasible in the mid-term.
Out of interest, though, what exactly is that you find difficult with tables in Scrivener?
Hello again.
The problem is not the function. Is the functionality. Scrivener, what it does, it does very well. For me, at least, is quasi-perfect. But I think there may still be more perfect.
In academic work, apart from the bibliography management, there are three factors that are usually very heavy: Creating design and management of tables, graphs and equations.
So far I design the tables in Word, I copy them as image and paste it in Scrivener.
For me, the ideal workflow with Scrivener would be to create, design and manage tables through some kind of plug-in specific to work with this type of resource. A program that would allow designing complex tables with table footnotes, pre-configured designs that meet APA rules, etc.
For example, the workflow would be the next:
a) insert --> table (open plug-in)
b) Design table
c) Save table (with metadata assigned specifically to this table). Table are saved where cursor are situated
d) Double click in the table open again the plug-in for modify the table
I am aware that is not the philosophy of Scrivener, but … it’s one of my wishes to convert Scrivener an even more perfect program for academic writers.
Sorry for my insistence about this topic.
Best regards.
I know this thread is long dead, but on a related note, I think it would be awesome if there was an Excel Plugin for Scrivener, where maybe you could embed an excel file in Scrivener.
I’m not sure if it’s a possibility, but for me there are some things that I’d rather be able to update and store in Excel, but still view in Scrivener. Right now I’ve been exporting my excel sheet to a PDF and then uploading the PDF into Scrivener, but every time I make a change in excel I have to re upload the new version.
If there was a way to create a plugin that would allow me to embed the excel sheet into Scrivener while also keeping it updated, it would save a lot of time. (But of course, in the meantime I’ll just continue to use two different files. #FirstWorldProblems)
"Right now I’ve been exporting my excel sheet to a PDF and then uploading the PDF into Scrivener, but every time I make a change in excel I have to re upload the new version. "
This is possible (or at least it was on the Mac). Make an alias of your excel file then Files > Import > Research Files as Aliases… and import the alias. This gives you a view of the excel spreadsheet, including the ability to switch worksheets etc. I made a wish that we could just import excel files directly but Keith had some issues with what files to “import” to the binder so the alias trick does the job…
It’s possible to create a Word document that has a live link to an Excel workbook/worksheet. In theory, one could use this linking behavior as a workaround – create the Word document with the link to the spreadsheet and import the Word doc, not the Excel workbook.
I haven’t tested this in Scrivener, though, to know whether or not viewing the imported Word doc will preserve the live link to the Excel workbook, so does anyone know whether that will actually work?
No, it won’t. The links between Office products depend on Microsoft-specific code – they’re not something standard, like HTML – and are not preserved by the format converter Scrivener uses. In fact, there’s a significant possibility that importing such a file would crash Scrivener.
The “Import Research Files as Aliases” mechanism is the “official” solution to the problem of editing unsupported file types from Scrivener.
WOW, is this still a problem? This is very relevant and essential.
I also just purchased because of Black Friday sale its 1 Dec 2020 and after watching a few videos the reason I pulled the trigger was what looked like a good way to save time and streamline my work process from literature searches (collecting lots of papers on Zotero) then inputting certain details from them into a set document made up of tables. But the tables are not quite right when imported from a word file, and fixing them in scrivener seems to be a huge learning curve… The manual seem to be difficult to navigate finding how to format tables, so those more experienced here please let me know if Table Formatting is still a big problem in Scrivener.
Another minor problem: Importing Microsoft Word files seems to be available straight off, but so far (I cannot as yet see how) all pages files are not importable immediately or in the same way. An assumption on my part that it should be available.
Microsoft publishes its .docx file format (officeopenxml.com); Apple does not publish its Pages format, and has said that it has no intentions to and may alter it between Pages versions. Therefore it is not possible to support Pages import/export directly.
its 1 Dec 2020 and after watching a few videos the reason I pulled the trigger was what looked like a good way to save time and streamline my work process from literature searches (collecting lots of papers on Zotero) then inputting certain details from them into a set document made up of tables. But the tables are not quite right when imported from a word file, and fixing them in scrivener seems to be a huge learning curve… The manual seem to be difficult to navigate finding how to format tables, so those more experienced here please let me know if Table Formatting is still a big problem in Scrivener.