Bold, italics, hyperlinks removed when compliling to PDF, Word, RTF

[macOS 10.15.6, Scrivener 3.1.5]

Hi guys,

I have run into a very odd problem – maybe a kind soul can help:

I have a small Scrivener project (5,000 words, a few images), and compiling to PDF, Word and RTF will remove / discard

  • all bold and italics formatting
  • all outgoing (web) hyperlinks.

Oddly, internal links (cross-references) will work in these formats.

This happens both with my custom and the built-in formats (e.g. PDF / Modern).

I’m only seeing this problem with one project – others built from scratch will work as expected.

Now compiling to Multimarkdown will retain/map these as expected (bold, italics, links.

Pandoc > Word also works as expected, i.e. I get a Word document with bold, italics and working links.

Did I maybe miss a well-hidden setting? :slight_smile:

Thank you.

Click the gear icon above the righthand pane of the main Compile screen. Probably those options are responsible.

Katherine

Thank you. I checked these, but “Remove all hyperlinks” is not checked. See screenshot. I also don’t see why and how bold and italic would be removed for one export format (PDF), but not for another.

Compile settings.png

Also check the Transformations pane in the Compile Format editor.

It’s possible to set different options for each output format. For example, PDF files are often used to create physical books, in which hyperlinks are meaningless.

Katherine

Thank you. Been there, done that :slight_smile: (really: I went through every dialog before posting here). Screenshot shows PDF Transformations settings from my custom format.

And again: I can use the same formats (custom or built-in) on another (from-scratch) document and will get the expected results (bold, italics, hyperlinks). So it looks like a document-level issue.
Transformation Settings.png

Hmm. The options in the Compile pane can be different across projects, but the Compile Formats are the same.

Have you applied any styles in the problem project?

Katherine

I have a few styles, but bold, italic and hyperlink are removed everywhere, including the main ( no style) parts.

OK; I think I/we looked at every possible source, and I’m giving up. I’ll export the project as Multimarkdown and import/split it into a new empty project.

Thank you for your help.

Did you by any chance choose a font that hasn’t bold and italics? A custom downloaded font perhaps?

Another good idea, but no: It was just out-of-the-box macOS Helvetica.

Whatever has gone wrong: I have exported the full project in Multimarkdown format and imported it into an empty blank project (Scrivener’s “Import and Split” feature is fantastic). Everything is now working as expected; bold, italics, all other styling and hyperlinks show up in all compiled formats.

If you’d like to send the original project to the support team that might help us sort out the problem.

You can email a project by using the File -> Backup -> Backup To command, and checking the box to create a ZIP backup. Send it to mac.support@literatureandlatte.com and reference this thread.

Katherine

I’m just replying to say that I’ve run into the same problem. Scrivener 3.1.5, MacOS 10.15.6

I haven’t checked the bold/italics thing, but external hyperlinks are disappearing on export to PDF, but are preserved on export to EPUB.