Can i easily print the Binder

I use Scrivener in a different way than most folks here. I organize my thoughts to solve a problem before
i program the thoughts into a computer application written in a variety of languages. Hence, the Binder is really my deliverable to myself.

I do use the associated text section for a Binder element to capture thoughts I might have.

So a very important task for me is to be able to print the Binder contents (names of folders). I dont want
the files in those folders or the folders. i just want the names of the folders (Binder Content).

Any help?

I do realize that the outline view can be made to show the Binder Folder names, but the spacing of folder names is dictated by some other criterea than used in the Binder itself.

any help is appreciated.

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You are actually using the binder as some sort of outline tool, if I understand right.
I do kind of the same when developing novel ideas.

To print:

Select the draft/manuscript folder in the binder, make sure it is displayed as an outline in the editor. image

Move the focus to the editor. (That can be done by simply clicking on its scrollbar.)

You can test the output first, either with print preview or by printing to a PDF :
image
This is the Windows system print dialog, but I am sure a Mac has the same “print to PDF” thingy somewhere.

After that, once you confirmed your settings/output are fine, you can either print the PDF, or output straight to print.

There is another way that doesn’t involve the outliner, but there is currently a bug that crashes Scrivener when inserting the documents’ title (Windows version). So that is it for now.
You could also set yourself a compile format if you prefer. It might be a tad more flexible, depending on what you need.
But if all that you need at the moment is a straight forward print of the binder a you see it, that should do.

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Vincent,

You were fantastic. Ultra Clear.

I did have a problem at the very end. Where did you find the print preview or print to pdf? in Scrivener->File-> print preview and print current document are grayed out. I have W11 insider preview

I will play with compile to see if i can get it to do what i want as well…but first let me play with compile
so that i can ask you intelligent questions.

Thank you very much for replying and doing so with such wonderful detail that i could easily follow your recommendations.
Respectfully,
bil

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. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hi Vincent_Vincent,

Thank you for outlining how I might print out the Binder. It is a capability that I have wanted to utilize for some time.

Unfortunately, I am unable to replicate the steps you have outlined for the Scrivener Windows version on my Mac.

I would be grateful if anyone, who may be using the Scrivener Mac version and is able to print their Binder following Vincent_Vincent’s outline, can share what steps I may be missing.

In the past, I’ve relied on screen captures of the Binder that I then copied-and-pasted together to create a list. I’d then convert the list to text and import it into my project. It would been nice to have the ability to print the 1000+ items in my Binder to a single PDF file. I could then easily convert the list of Binder items into a text file.

Thank you for reading, and for any tips that I might use to repeat Vincent_Vincent’s Windows insight into steps to do the same on the Mac.

scrive
:thinking:

Hey scrive, here is another easy way :
(To anyone reading this, I would normally recommend using the “Enumerated Outline” compile format, rather than what follows.)

Pick a compile format that you already know works fine with your project and duplicate it.
image
. . . . . . . .

In the formatting panel, check “title” for all layouts and uncheck everything else.

Format your layouts’ titles. (Where it says “Section Title” in my screenshot above.) Say a font size of 12pt, that should do it.
Clean up sections layouts prefix, suffix, etc – if any.
image

. . . . . . . .

Set all separators to “single return” or to “empty line”. (Your preference.)


. . . . . . . .

Set an indent to match the binder’s structure if you wish:

That’s it. Name your compile format something like “Titles only”.
Then compile the whole draft.

You could also use the “Enumerated Outline” compile format (in the “Scrivener formats” at the bottom left of the compile panel), but in your case, since you have a zillion section types (or so I heard :stuck_out_tongue:) , it may well be way faster for you to use a compile format for which you already have those assigned to section layouts.

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Hi Vincent_Vincent,

Thank you for such a detailed and timely response.

I believe I have followed your instructions, but likely due to the complexity of my project, I’ve encountered the following compile error:

pgflibraryprofiler: relative values are measured against the totaltime of `main
job’.
! Arithmetic overflow.
\pgfprofilepostprocess@single …ly \pgf@yb by100
\edef \pgfprofilecur@total…
l.8920 \end{document}

I’ll have to look at it further when I have a few minutes … I’m in the middle of a clean-up session of my project at the moment, and I’ll get back to the error when I’m dome.

Thank you again,
scrive
:thinking:

This “looks” like a LaTeX compiler error. True? You compiling with LaTex (which has nothing much to do with Scrivener other than Scrivener can easily produce a *.tex file for a LaTeX compiler to use. I use it all the time.

Perhaps try compiling to, say, PDF and then print the PDF?

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Hi rms,

Thank you for the thought …

I was at least able to compile, but I must have missed something in the translation from Windows to the Mac.

What I ended ups with was a complete rendition of my Scrivener code … all 374 pages !

I’ll need more time to determine what I am doing wrong …

Thank you for the thought …

scrive
:thinking:

Just to add my ½p’orth…

I’d do the compile routine to select only the titles, then rather than compiling to PDF, I’d compile to RTF or TXT, since I seem to remember, @scrive, you said you wanted to end up with a text file. If you also want a PDF, you can print to PDF from either, using TextEdit or whatever.

:smile:

Mark

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Good Evening Vincent
I did get the binder to be seen in the print preview following the steps that you outlined above.

The key to your help was in understanding that the focus had to be shifted from the document binder
to the outline view. in re-reading your posting, that info is as clear as it can be. you not only indicate
what i have to do but how. I respect your help even more today, because of how well you conveyed the solution to me.

In achieving the above, I discovered that I did not have control over the print preview. It previewed the ENTIRE document instead of the collapsed outline of the binder display.

so i decided to try and use compile, as you mentioned, as a way to limit the binder information i wanted to preview and print.

In compile, I could easily select which folders in the binder i wanted to compile but i could not figure out how to tell the compiler to compile the binder and not the documents associated with the binder folders.

Can you help me with that endeavor?

Thank you

Since you use binder in a similar manner as I do (to organize thoughts), i wanted to share with you
an issue that i have encountered in writing down my thoughts. (remember i use scrivener to organize how i am trying to solve a technical problem. once i have understand the relationships of all the problem components, i then can program the solution).

The issue is this: i get lost in the details. since i normally use object oriented programming, i end up with
a huge number of objects encapsulated in others.

so my tentative solution is to

  • print only the highest two levels of the project with only essential subfolders.
  • then open up one of the two high levels and print the folder on top and the folders on the next level
    I continue this process. for some reason having the printed pages with minimal info enables me to
    look at the sheets and determine the best place to put the new info i want to add to the binder.

I thought i could just look at the binder view without the actual hard copy in front of me…but there are so many entries in the binder that i lose sight of where i want the new information. if i collapse the outline
i then can’t see the new information.

perhaps you have overcome the above issue. if so, please share with me. thank you.

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By printing only the titles, it recreates the binder as you see it. (But showing only the documents marked as included in compile.)
One title after the other.
There are already compile formats for that. Give those with “Outline” in their name a try. – They are at the bottom of the compile formats list on the left of the main compile panel.

And you can automatically indent those titles, so that it shows the parent/child relationship between project files:

This is all in the compile format.
To access those panels/settings, double-click the compile format you are using in the list on the left side of the main compile panel:
Duplicate if prompted to.

This is the “Enumerated Outline” compile format: (Titles and nothing else, with indentation.)
image


I think this might be a bug. (And I can confirm the odd behavior, I just tested it.)
I am pretty certain that printing the outliner content isn’t supposed to print the whole of the project’s binder.
[EDIT] I posted it as a potential bug :

Using labels, I color code my documents in the binder.
image

image

image

Sometimes I’ll even use icons on top of that :
image

Using labels and/or icons, you can easily mark the destination as well as the files that need to be moved. :wink:

My icons

These are free to download at
Essential Generic Free Icons (SVG & PNG) » CSS Author

Hi Vincent
I did construct a new format in the compile tool. I labeled it BinderPrint
when i compile the document Scrivener crashes with this setting.
i will look for the outline format, use it, and see if Scrivener crashes as well.

ok…here are some things i found out.
number one
my compile format designer displays differently.
yours has displayed chaper and subchapter
mine has all kinds of other items. i tried checking only one or a few scrivener crashes. if i check off all
the options (left most column), scrivener does not crash.
number two
formatting is not as expected. I can change indentation as you demonstrated for me.
BUT I am getting an extra blank line between each of my binder folders (i can see in word)
i assume that somewhere there is a check box that enables me to eliminate teh extra line

Thank you for helping me with this project.

btw
I love your ideas on how to organize. i will try them out as soon as i get this compiling operation
in practice.

Thank you again.
bil

If you mean after a page-break, that is a known bug.
The only solutions are manual.

Else, if you systematically get an empty line between files within a single page, look at the “separators” panel of your compile format.
Where it says “Empty line”, change that for “Single return”.
→ There will likely be a couple to change :
image

P.S. Do not compile to Print.
Compile to PDF (or to Word, whatever), then print the PDF (or Word doc, whatever) once your Scrivener compile is fine.
Compile to print is buggy.

Don’t worry about it.
That’s normal, I screenshotted a custom compile format.
Nevermind the different names, do with what you’ve got in there.

What version are you running ? Windows, Mac ?
Are you up to date ?

Have you tried just selecting the binder items whose titles you want to capture, and pressing Ctrl+C / ⌘C, then pasting into whatever program you want?

You might also consider a more useful marking scheme in the future than depending upon the folder/file difference. That isn’t really something you can search for, or do much with (they are all “binder content” as you put). But if you give the item a colour Label or something of that nature, then you can run a search for that label, get a tidy list of them, and copy and paste from that.

Or, use the contents of that search result list to compile from, and avoid the extended unorthodox configuration. If you’re compiling from the search result list alone, then the list only has what you want. You can then use a stock Format like Enumerated Outline, or one of the other outliner oriented formats, which has title-only layouts built already.

If any of that sounds feasible and you aren’t sure how to do it, let me know.

I just tried it :
image

Unless you meant selecting the titles (as text) then copy/paste them one by one, this unfortunately doesn’t work.
(And I doubt that doing them one by one is what you meant.)

@whburling
Using “text” as your settings could be a workaround, but you wouldn’t get indents.
And for some reason, no print preview either. (Preview through print to PDF.)
Display your documents selection as a scrivening, and setup the print like this :
(You could add metadata if you wish, but you have no control over which will print. It’s all or nothing.)