I am not sure I’ve understood the idea of compiling and formatting. I would like to do the basic formatting in Scrivener, for example typography and indents, and then be able to compile or print parts of the draft, without changing the look of the text.
I have tried to mark “As is”, and to unmark the box “override text and note formatting” but it still changes typography to Courier in the compile.
How should I do this? I just want the text to stay the same in the compile as in Scrivener.
You should be able to do this by leaving the “override text and notes formatting” box unchecked. Are you changing the “Format As” preset after you do that, or switching projects? What format are you compiling to?–I’m assuming direct to print from your title, but I just want to make sure.
I’ve been compiling for Word, just to make sure it looks ok before printing. I leave the “Override text and note formatting” box unchecked. I tried again, my Times new roman becomes Courier. It looks neat, but not the way I want it…
And I have Format As set at “Custom” - is that how it should be?
“Custom” is fine; it just means some settings have been altered from a saved preset.
So you have your documents in the editor all drafted using Times New Roman, with whatever indents you want, etc. Then you compile to .doc, leaving “override text and notes formatting” unchecked and your font in the compiled document all comes out as Courier–and are your indents and line-spacing changed as well? The override checkbox only affects document text and document notes text, so titles and synopses, if you’re compiling them, will still use whatever formatting is set in compile; if you started from a Novel template or the like, chances are these are set for Courier. But if that box isn’t checked, then none of those formatting settings should be affecting your document text, so I’m not sure what’s going on here. I haven’t been able to reproduce this yet, either.
You could try switching to use the compile preset “Times 12pt with Bold Folder Titles”; that will give you the basics for overriding your text using TNR with a half-inch first-line indent and 2.0 spacing, which is fairly standard. It’s only set to include titles for folders, but by checking or unchecking the appropriate boxes you can change that pretty quickly in the Formatting area of compile if you want something different. So this will still override your editor formatting, but it might be closer to what you were going for anyway. You could also then try unchecking the box to see if it makes a difference to prevent the Courier from showing up (for instance, the titles will still be formatted with TNR).
If you have a moment, before you do the above, you could save your compile settings that you’ve been using and attach them here so I can take a peek and see if I can figure out why it’s not working for you. Before you make any alterations in compile, click the “Save” button in the lower left and give your settings a name. It’ll give you the file path for where they’ll be stored, something like C:\Users[YourUserName\AppData\Local\Scrivener\Scrivener\CompileSettings if you’re on Windows 7. Then in your post here, click Upload Attachment and navigate to that folder to select the file and upload it.
Thanks a lot for making such an effort to help me!
I upload the settings. However, I think I have found out what the problem is, or at least a way to solve it. If I change the text from TNR into something else, it stays the same in the compile. I can even change it back to TNR, and it stays TNR in the compile.
I have imported the text files from Word, where I had created a special text format (like “normal”, but I had created my own.) I used this text format for the text. Might that be the problem? (not sure I can explain exactly what I mean in English…)
I recall I had some problems when importing the text files to Scrivener, but I don’t remember how now. I think I had to convert the .doc files into something else before importing. This was an earlier beta.
Again, thanks a lot!