Can't copy custom meta data between projects

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

I have two Scrivener projects open.
I dragged a folder with about 20 cards from the binder of A to B’s binder.
The first time I did this, there was a populated custom meta-data field in A but not in B. I created the field in B (after the copy), and hey presto, the data appeared in it. Great.
I realised I needed a second meta-data field.
So I created it in A, populated it, and did the drag and drop again.
This time, I created the second field in B first, and then did the drag and drop.
However, only the data in the first field appeared in B. The second field was empty.
I did a few experiments - creating both fields first in B, not creating them at all, closing and opening the files - and each time only the first field’s data would copy across.
And now - I don’t know why - I can’t get the first field’s data to copy across either.
Any ideas?

2

I wondered if the data had copied across but for some reason wasn’t showing, and so I searched the .scrix file - and yes, the data was there. But the xml array was using an incorrect field name that I had created earlier, and then changed.
So I created new meta-data fields using the old names that were in the xml array, and :smiley: wonderful! the data was displayed correctly. I could then change the meta-data field names to the ones I want, using the ‘Edit Custom Meta-Data’ dialogue.

Obviously though there is still a bug of some kind in here, associated with renaming the meta-data fields.

3

This isn’t precisely a bug. The custom-metadata wasn’t built to copy between projects, so its internal references use the initial name (or some modified version of that) and necessarily do not change that even if the user changes the display name. If anything, the bug is that the custom meta-data isn’t entirely wiped when copying to another project, but most of the time that’s not really a problem and can be beneficial.

We’re working to incorporate copying custom meta-data between projects for the next major version (both on Mac and Windows). Meanwhile, your crafty method will get you around the limitation. :smiley: