Copying Outline

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

My book project has a complete outline, some synopsis and some text in documents.

I want to make a major shift in the outline. Close to starting over. I can’t find a way to do it. Versions doesn’t and duplicates doesn’t. It looks like I should save the project with a new name. And then delete any text and then I can redo the outline and go to split view and bring things back that work in the new version.

Is there a better way? Use the outline feature in word?

Tom

2

Hi,

You could just make a copy of the project in the Finder before radically altering it, yes, but what is going wrong with Duplicate?

Best,
Keith

3

Keith,

At the point I tried dupicate I was thinking I just get the outline by selecting it. I got the whole thing so it is an easier way than saving as. Same result, I suspect.

Tom

4

If all you are wanting to do is extract an outline of titles without any text, you might be able to use the MultiMarkdown exporter to accomplish this. The way you would go about doing this is like so:

  1. Open up the Compile panel
  2. Select MultiMarkdown (just the top one) as your export format
  3. In the Document Elements section right above the export format selector, de-select everything except for Titles for all three types
  4. Click the Export button and save this file somewhere handy
  5. Now choose a spot in the Binder where you want the import to be placed. You can either create a new project for this step, or import right into the draft and move the old stuff out of the Draft somewhere else in the Binder, that’s up to you
  6. Select File/Import/MultiMarkdown File and choose the file you just exported

You should get a replication of your outline structure without any of the text data. Note this method will probably not serve you well if you had synopsis you wanted saved, or any meta-data is important.