Is there a way to change the section types in a group in the compiler (or in the binder) without having to individually change 50 or so dropdowns?
Also, I can’t find a way to change or edit the names of the Section types as in the video tutorials. All I have are the ‘Heading’, ‘Sub-Heading’, ‘Section’, etc. If I try and go to ‘Edit’ in the Inspector and create a new Section Type, nothing happens - the type is created but it doesn’t appear in any dropdowns.
I’ve been trying to compile a Kindle e-book for the past two days now, and am finding the new system really frustrating and non-intuitive I’m afraid.
You can make bulk changes in either the compiler or the main project (corkboard, binder, etc.). In all cases the basic idea is the same: right-click on the selected items you want to change—in the binder of course the contextual menu will have a lot more going on, so the options will be in a submenu.
See also:
§7.6.1, Applying Section Types Manually, under the section on Section Types.
§23.3.2, Assigning Section Layouts, in the Compile chapter.
It’s the same as any list of items in Scrivener, like keywords or auto-complete phrases: you double-click to edit, drag-and drop to move them around (if the list allows), and use the + and - keys to create and remove them.
As for the latter problem I’d need more detail to know what is going on there. I’ve never seen a case where you can create a type and it never ends up in any of the tools that work with types. You don’t see it in the other tab in that pane? You aren’t clicking Cancel—it shows up if you open Project Settings again?
Appendix C.2 has detailed instructions on using this pane.
You an assign Section Types to multiple documents in the same way you can assign labels or keywords - select the documents you want to assign them to (e.g. in the binder), Ctrl-click on them, and then use the “Section Types” submenu.
That said, you shouldn’t really ever need to change the Section Type for 50 or more documents. If you have 50 documents that need to use the same Section Type, then you would be much better off setting up the default Section Type for those documents using Project Settings > Section Types > Default Types by Structure.
I’m not quite sure what you mean about new Section Types not appearing in any dropdowns, If you add a Section Type via Project Settings, it should appear in the Section Type menu in the Inspector.
I’m sorry you are finding the new system frustration. I hope that this is just temporary acclimatisation, because I spent months working out the new Compile system so that it would still contain the same power as the old one but would be easier for new users and require less need to edit Compile settings. Whereas before you had to think in terms of project structure to set up formatting (and then often move things around in the binder just to get them formatted how you want because of the rigid structure formatting), in Scrivener 3 you just have to think about what documents are. You then tell Compile how to format documents by their type rather than by their structural level (as was done in 2.x). The “Default Types by Structure” area of Project Settings should look familiar to users of Scrivener 2 used to setting up formatting by structure in Compile, though, because it allows you to set up the default section types for documents in the project in the same way.
I spent two hours last night going through the tutorial section on compiling. I even looked at some of the new instruction videos (desperation time; I much prefer to learn by reading and doing.) But, it was time well spent. The tutorial and videos took me by the hand, as it were, and gently led me through enough of the process to learn
a) how this new stuff relates to the old stuff (and it does.)
b) where in general to look for stuff in the new interface.
It sounds like you’ve got a big investment in the old compile system. I did, too. There’s a cool little feature Keith put in that let me import my old saved compile formats, therby giving me a place to start:
select multiple files in the binder and then click the dropdown in the Inspector (doesn’t work)
select multiple files in the compile contents list and click the dropdowns there (doesn’t work either)
I’ve created three Section Types in the Project Settings:
When I go back to my project and select a text file in the Binder the Section Type dropdown shows only the following options:
If I click ‘Edit…’ the Section Types panel appears (as the first image above) and I select one of the options (say, ‘Front Matter’), click ‘OK’ and the Section type remains as ‘Section’, and won’t change. The dropdown list remains as above. The same happens in the Compiler dropdowns.
I’m sorry that I don’t sound more enthusiastic at present, as I understand the huge amount of work you have put into the software.
I have to admit that I have something of a love-hate relationship with Scrivener. I love it enough that I even bought a Macbook solely to use the Mac version(!). But that was after a long and painful dawning that the Windows version wouldn’t do what I had hoped.
But most of the new version is fantastic - it looks and feels sleeker and more modern than v2. I just keep finding myself stuck on some problem that seems to take days spent searching the web and forums to resolve.
Once I get these problems out of the way I’m sure will be back to loving writing in Scrivener once again.
If you (Keith) would be able to answer my question on it please, I can hopefully get moving again on my work as it’s driving me crazy:
When Scrivener auto-generates its TOC for Kindle, is there any way to add a text section to the TOC when the ‘Title’ checkbox in the ‘Section layouts’ area of the Compiler is unchecked? As soon as I uncheck it I lose all of my chapters from the Software reader’s TOC.
tried opening a different project and everything worked fine.
Created a new project and dragged all the content from the problem project into it. All seems to be working fine now.
Original, problem project still won’t assign new Section-Types.
Will have to work with the new file I guess - all my custom metadata seems to have been lost in the move - will have to start re-adding all that. sighs…
Are you aware than you can drag custom metadata from one project to another?
Just open them both side by side, highlight the custom data settings in Project Settings and drag it across to the Project settings of the other project. (It won’t do the assignment to documents of course – but perhaps dragging them across after you copied the settings might work?)
Could you please zip up and send the problem project to kb-tech-support AT literatureandlatte.com? I’m guessing that a bug is triggering an error to be thrown in the background, so that things are getting stuck. What you’re seeing there is definitely not right!
I do understand the frustration. I think I underestimated how invested some users would be in the old version, and yet it is understandable given how much learning the old system took! Right now I’m putting together a project for Scrivener 2 users. It’s a Scrivener 2 project containing a Scrivener 2 custom Compile format, and the idea is that you open the project in Scrivener 3 and it then walks you through the new features and also how to convert the old Compile format and use the new system. I’m hoping a hands-on project like that will help things click a bit better for users accustomed to the old system.
As for the ToC, you have a couple of options there. First, Scrivener will place a title in the ToC for any item following a section break. So if you use a Section Layout for your text documents that has a section (page) break before it, then their titles will show up in the ToC. Otherwise, why not just use a custom ToC? Scrivener’s auto-generated ToC is generic and designed for the most obvious use-cases. Those who want more control can just provide their own ToC page.
Thanks for getting back to me Keith, but after noticing that other projects worked okay, I restarted Scrivener and the original problem file is now working. I can’t replicate the problem.
I’ll have another look through and send you anything if the problem recurs. Thanks for all your help with it.
Thank you so much for replying, this problem has been driving me crazy!
The problem I have is that Scrivener seems to only place a title in the TOC if it has the ‘Title’ checkbox ticked. If I setup the chapters using an image placeholder instead of a text title as here:
When I open the .mobi in a Kindle viewer the chapters are missing from the Table of Contents:
If I check the ‘Title’ checkbox:
The chapter pages appear:
That’s what I had planned on doing originally, but every Kindle previewer I used defaulted to the auto-generated ToC with the missing titles:
I’m worried that I’ll have to give up on using images for the chapter headings and rename all my chapter text files in order to ensure the titles are generated with numbers and meaningful information. That will obviously have a knock-on effect when compiling to other formats.
Scratch everything in my last reply - I’ve got it working.
I had assigned a different Table of contents title page in the compiler settings, because when I had first set it to my custom ToC the compiler kept throwing an error and would not create the file. I thought I was just mistaken on how it was supposed to work, but it appears to have been a problem with that open file.
Since restarting Scrivener I have tried assigning it to my custom ToC and all is working perfectly!
Interesting that when I restarted Scrivener it asked to authorise the serial number and access my Contacts again, so perhaps it was just having problems.
Fingers crossed all seems to be working fine now - thank you to all who offered their help and support.
Glad you got it working! I just replied to your other thread to explain that there are in fact quite strict rules on custom table of contents for ePub 3 format (these are rules of the ePub format rather than Scrivener). You need to make sure that the title of the contents page has a header level set, and that the rest of the page only contains links to the chapters and files. Anything else can cause ePub errors (I’m not sure we’ve documented that part properly yet).
