I’ve written over a half a million words in Scrivener and this morning in a new project I’ve found something I haven’t seen before.
My folders always look like the top one. Why does the bottom one have a page on it?
Thanks!
Because it has text in it (as explained in the section on “The Binder” in the help file). If you select the folder and turn off the corkboard (or turn off the outliner if that is visible), you will see the text inside it.
Best,
Keith
All my chapter folders have text in them in all my projects, and none of them have the little “page” visible on their icons.
In the help topic on the binder, I also don’t see that particular icon.
As long as it’s not telling me something that will change the nature of the folder in such a way that it changes my compiled manuscript, I don’t guess it makes any difference. I was just concerned that I had turned on something that I didn’t want to turn on.
There is a distinction between “my folder has text in it” and, “my folder has text documents in it”. Click on the folder that doesn’t have an icon, and then dismiss the Corkboard or Outliner by clicking on the respective toolbar icon. You should see a blank page—that folder has no text in it. Now click on the folder that has the icon and repeat the instructions. You should see text—or if you don’t there might be an accidental space character in the file. Folders can, like text files, have actual text in them (which is not to be confused with a folder that has text files beneath it as children). The icon alerts you that such a condition exists.
As for changing the way things compile, so long as you do not have the “text” box ticked in Compile for folder types, nothing will change. You might want to check it though and make sure nothing important is in there that you meant to put elsewhere.
Aha. Okay, that took care of it. There were a couple of characters there when I clicked clipboard. I deleted them, mystery solved. Thank you, as always!
As it says there, it also explains the differences between folders and text files there (and their similarities). There’s also a video all about the flexibility of folders in Scrivener that you may find useful on this page:
Wow, I missed that totally.
I have no idea how I managed to get text into a folder w/o opening a document to type in. I’ve seen all the videos at one time or another, but clearly need a refresher course. Thank you!
The easiest way to accidentally do this is with Edit Scrivenings. If you select a folder and view it in E.S., the folder text will actually be included—at the very top. It’s usually pretty easy to miss if you do not habitually put a lot of text into folders. It will just a be a blank line at the top.
It will surprise no one to know that as much as I’ve used Scrivener and loved Scrivener, I haven’t begun to scratch the surface of its many little jewels. Thus, I’ve never used Edit Scrivenings. Again, I need to dive back into the videos. I have checked them out at various times but I tend to miss details.
However–I think this may be the first time I’ve attempted to use the novel template. Perhaps when I opened it, it had text in a folder. If not, I have no clue.
I usually just start with an empty project, set up the format and take off.
Yes, that will be it - if you read through the explanation document right at the top of the binder in the novel template project, you will see that it explains how folders have some text in them to hold the chapter titles. You’ll definitely want to have a read of that because if you want to keep things consistent, you will either need to set up other folders the same or turn off the text contents of folders in Compile Draft.
All the best,
Keith