I don’t know if I just can’t figure this out or if it’s just not possible.
I wanted to do a quick and dirty sharing of some things from my project with a critique partner. I use collections to track various storylines/POVs. So I went to my collections, highlighted the parts I wanted to share and did a Control-C but when I go to paste it elsewhere, I only get a single document from Scrivener, not the multiples I had highlighted.
I was hoping to avoid the having to export for this sort of thing.
I hope this makes sense.
For anyone on Windows reading this in the future, see MimeticMouton’s reply directly below this post as it appears that my suggestion doesn’t work for Windows…
I am on a Mac so it might be different, but for me I need to:
(1) select all the titles in the collections list that I want (so that they are highlighted)
(2) all the text then appears in the editor
(3) cmd+a to select all the text
(4) cmd+c to copy it
(5) cmd+v pastes all the text into an external editor
For me, the key is having the titles selected in the collections column, not just the collections header itself.
Other people will probably have better solutions.
Scrivenings on Windows is a little different from the Mac at the moment, and with the way the multiple files are loaded in the editor it is not currently possible to copy across documents, so Briar Kit’s method won’t work for this. Using a quick compile is probably the simplest method; in the Contents drop-down menu you can select to compile the collection, and if you just go with the “Original” preset (from Format As), you’ll basically just get out exactly what you have in the editor, all combined into a single document with a single empty line between document sections. You can also make any adjustments to this you like, e.g. if you want a separator character between sections or no separation at all, or if you wanted to add something like “Proof Copy” in the page header or footer (under Page Settings in the compile dialog). You can then use the Save Preset button to create a new preset for this quick share format, so that you can both access it in other projects and load it up quickly again in this project even if you switch to another compile setting at some point.
Well drats. Thanks, MM. (and Briar.)
Compile and I don’t get along very well yet. I guess this will force me to spend more time with it. Sigh. I just need to grab a few different poems to share.
I appreciate the quick response.
Start with just the “Original” from the Format As drop down; that doesn’t alter the editor formatting, so it’s a good place to begin, especially since you’re just looking for something quick and dirty. To choose to compile just your collection, click the blue arrow button to expand the window, then click Contents on the left. There you’ll see a drop-down menu at the top of the table, from which you can select the particular collection you want to compile. If you don’t want to include all the items in the collection, you can deselect “include in compile” for those particular items in the table. Then just pick your output format from the “Compile For” menu (e.g. a PDF, an RTF, print) and click Compile.
Take a look at what you’ve got out and then if you need to make tweaks and need help, post back with a description of what you want to change (from what to what) and we’ll try to help.
I can see how this, and saving it for the future, say to compile just a collection would be handy. But there were too many clicks back and forth to select a collection then deselect items in the collection. I just went through manually and highlighted the few pieces I wanted individually then did a normal Windows cut and paste.
But I’m going to practice your instructions because when I get this first draft complete I’ll want to print out each story thread and each POV from their respective collections and this will be very helpful.
Thanks again.