I list my chapters under names, not numbers. So the binder list should, and did, read:
Gosport
Amiens 1
Caroline
Voyage
FO 1
Amiens 2
Paris arrival
Duel
etc.
Somehow, the list has now rearranged itself in alphabetical order, so it’s now Amiens 1, Amiens 2, Caroline 1, Duel . . .
How did I manage to do this dreadfully annoying (for me) thing, and is there any way I can revert to the old order?
I can go through the synopses and work out this chapter came before that chapter and after that chapter. But it’s a book I haven’t worked on for a while, so it’s not hot in my brain and it’s going to be difficult getting it back in order, given that there are four separate story threads and more than forty chapters.
What does your binder look like? Is it still blue, or is it a different colour, with stripes? If the latter, you’re not looking at the binder at all, but search results or a search collection, which show documents in alphabetical order. If so, click on the little “x” in the footer at the bottom of the binder area.
The only other way documents can be sorted is if you manually sort them via Documents > Sort, but you get a warning telling you that can’t be undone, so it’s unlikely that you would have done that by mistake.
Pale blue, just as usual, no stripes. I’m sure I didn’t click on Sort - I just had a look, and you then get a choice of how to sort - no way would I have clicked on any of those options, unless I’ve been sleepwalking and checked into Scrivener in my dreams.
I know I’ll just have to try and put it all in order, but I’m worried it might happen again. I’ve written ten novels using Scrivener, all using names for chapters, and I’ve never had this problem before.
But it’s a small if time-consuming glitch, and although I said some fairly rude things at the screen, I wouldn’t diss Scrivener for anything, don’t know how I’d write without it now!
To insure against a re-sorting eventuality of this kind, once I have a fairly settled order of scenes, I create a metadata column in the Outliner in which I number them sequentially. Not a long task.