totally newbie. Here is the situation I may encounter very soon:
I write a draft in scrivener (with folders/sections, perhaps even in multimarkdown). I compile it into MS Word file which is the only software my collaborator uses. He makes some changes to it and sends it back as a Word file. I need to work on it further but I want to do it in scrivener again. What should I do?
Any suggestions on such type of collaboration scenario?
Many thanks.
At the moment, there aren’t any really good options. Using Word’s track changes and integrating things manually is a possibility, but depending on how extensive their edits are, that could be prohibitively expensive in terms of time. Another option is to import the document into Scrivener and split it all up again, but this can have other ill-effects, especially if you have used a lot of Scrivener’s meta-data and notation features.
Working around these limitations, there are strategies you can use to minimise the amount of work, such as agreeing to focus on parts of the book rather than the whole thing at once. Just compile a chapter and work on that—then integrate and repeat. This is not always viable however, depending on the phase of the project and the personalities involved.
Another method is to use the Export feature, instead of Compile, which produces a file for each item in the Binder, organised into folders to match the book structure. This method requires good communication on what has been edited.
Search the forum for “collaboration”. This is a topic that has been discussed quite a bit in the past, and there are a number of techniques and how-to expansions on the above.
Fortunately, there are some really exciting possibilities in development which will make this phase of the writing project much easier for everyone involved. I know that doesn’t help you out right now, but it is a problem that has had thought put into it, and I think the solution will be extremely useful for collaboration.
I’m in a similar situation. My coauthor, bless him, doesn’t want to learn to use a new app. So when h e drafts a chapter, he sends it to me in Word, I edit and rewrite in Pages, and send it back to him in Word. When I draft a chapter I export to Word.
Give Apple credit here: for all the rtf inadequacies, Pages makes this sort of collaboration with Wordites pretty seamless. (It even has a “Share” menu item that lets me send my Pages file to my coauthor in Word without making an intermediate save to Word; why doesn’t every writing app make sharing so easy?) So it’s really not a problem, though maybe a bit of an irritant at first.
The bang hangup for us is footnotes, which he wants to see at the bottom of each page. When Word files get imported into SCrivener, footnotes go to the end of the file. But as I say, it’s really not too much of an issue so far, because by the time we’re exchanging chapters, I’m past the info organizing stage that scrivener makes so easy anyway. We’ll see if that changes as we go further into the book.
But only Wordites, and that’s the main problem with Pages as far as I’m concerned. This is exactly what Pages is for - sharing files with Word users. Users of anything else are out of luck. Sure, they’ve done a great job of making sure that if you use Pages, you can collaborate with Word users - but that seems to have been their only concern. If you want to collaborate with users of other Word processors, unless they support the proprietary, need-a-big-team-and-a-couple-of-years Word formats, then it’s a no go. And they don’t make the format available for other programs to interact with.
I’m confused here - how easy do you want it? Pages’ “Share” menu mostly does what File > Export does in other apps (or Compile in Scrivener). In fact, Pages’ File > Export even recreates some of the Share menu stuff, which is a little odd - the “Share” menu to me is a little on-the-nose. Oh, wait, you probably mean the Send to Mail in Word format, come to think of it. Yes, probably is convenient.
Save as RTF and import into Scrivener as RTF… Except that Pages is rubbish at RTF, so you will need to do this in Word, Nisus, Mellel, OpenOffice or any other word processor that supports the 23-year-old standard that is RTF. 
Pages really is a nice word processor - I’d use it more myself if it wasn’t so limited to being a Word alternative rather than a fully integrated word processor that can interact with more than the proprietary Word formats. I really recommend Nisus if you want to interact with Word and Scrivener. The lack of RTF, for me, severely limits Pages.
All the best,
Keith
Yes, that’s exactly what I like – I don’t have to save a Word version to disk. Much of what I do these days involves sharing with editors or other writers, designers, etc. So I like having the easy one-step way to change formats and send. Of course, I don’t really need that in Scrivener, as it has the export options and is more meant for the stages before manuscript polishing.
Exactly, which is why I don’t do it – I don’t want to have to use Word or OO or yet another writing application. Scrivener, Bean/TextEdit and Pages are plenty!
I know – I never use Pages except when interacting with editors or my coauthor or making a CV/resume or something that needs to be pretty. Fortunately, with almost all editors I work wiith, RTF is fine and Word isn’t necessary. (We’re only using Word/Pages now because of footnotes and change tracking and my coauthor’s reluctance to learn Scrivener.) As Keith has documented on these forums, there’s really no excuse for Pages’ preposterously poor RTF support. Pages came bundled with my Mac, and works great with Word, so that’s why I use it. The rest of the time – 97%, I’d estimate – I use either Scrivener or Bean. Although I do like Pages’ new outlining capabilities and might use it to draft shorter pieces in which Scrivener is probably a little overkill. Except that I so love working in Scivener, I even use it for 500 word shorts!
I appreciate the recommendation of Nisus, but really, I don’t want another writing app to deal with. For now, Scrivener plus Bean works a treat, with occasional resorts to Pages when I need to share with the less enlightened.
I totally understand not wanting another word processor - four is quite plenty. 
I used Pages myself for outlining something short the other day - and then I wanted to bring it into Scrivener and cursed myself. Fortunately it doesn’t have complicated formatting, though, so I can just copy and paste or use the formats provided. My main grievance against Pages is just that it’s the cause of a lot of outraged support e-mails along the lines of, “You’re a MAC app and you DON’T SUPPORT PAGES!!?!?!?!???!”
All the best,
Keith