I was just writing on Scrivener for Windows, beta 3, when a curious submenu appeared over the text. I don’t know how I made it appear and now I can’t make it gone. I restarted the application and it’s gone. But I would like to know what triggered it, and how do I make it dissapear. It certainly looks like a nice feature, once I can make it work…
Sounds like you might have accidentally triggered scriptwriting mode. Did text statistics disappear from your footer bar? If so, that’s what happened. You can get back out of that mode in the Format menu. If you aren’t in scriptwriting mode, then we might have a bug, as that’s the scripting element selection interface.
No, statistics didn’t disappear from screen. I was just typing, the strangest command I was using was control i, for italics.
Update: it happened again this morning, only this time I was alert and ready to find out what was I doing. It happened when I hit “enter”. The “enter” key both activated and deactivated the script mode menu. It also changed a paragraph into another style (all caps). Since I’m writing a manual, not a script, I would consider this a bug.
Do you happen to remember anything that lead up to that point? There must be something more than simply pressing return, or it would be an extremely common problem.
Hello Amber,
Yes, I can describe you everything I did today when it happened: I started the program because my boss was next to me and I wanted to take notes on what she was telling me. I clicked on one of my documents, I put my cursor on a paragraph and pressed enter, in order to create a new paragraph an write. And there, again, just like it happened yesterday, there was the menu. I pressed enter again, and it disappeared. I pressed enter one more time, and it reappeared. I was in a hurry, I really needed to take this notes without struggling with the program, so I went to full screen. It happened again. Once again, I pressed enter, and it appeared; I pressed enter, and it reappeared. When I pressed “escape” to exit full screen and explore the view menu and deactivate the scripting mode, but Scrivener crashed.
I’ve been using the program since beta 1. This last week I have used it every day, and it wasn’t until yesterday that this strange behaviour begun. It appears to be random, except for the fact that once it appears, it may be necesary to restart the program in order to make it go (or find it in the menu, but I haven’t got to do that).
After this morning episode, I restarted the program and continued working the rest of the day without incidents.
I hope this helps you gathering information to determine if it’s a bug. Or maybe I’m a terrible user (or my Scrivener is compelling me to use it for literary fiction instead of boring daily job stuff… 
).
This pop-up only occurs in scriptwriting script mode. Check the binder next time this occurs to see if the text element icon is a yellow color instead of white. If it is then you have script mode enabled. You can disable it by clicking into the document and pressing CTRL+M. In script mode the pop-up menus you are seeing are perfectly acceptable.
Can you confirm if this is the case?
I won’t be able to confirm it until tuesday, when I’m back on my Windows computer. As far as I remember, no, no documents appeared in a different color.
I’m back in the office and now I can confirm that, indeed, a few documents are yellow. I have no idea how that happened. I followed your instructions: I clicked on the document, I pressed control + M and… nope… nothing happened, they’re still yellow. What am I doing wrong? (Scrivener for Windows might be trying to tell me something: go home and work on your mac, girl, or quit this job…).
I’ve had the same menu appear, seemingly at random. I only have two Scrivener projects that I’m working with and neither has any documents with the yellow icon. I know this isn’t much help, but I’ll keep an eye out and report what I’m doing if it happens again.
This menu will only appear if you are in Scriptmode i.e. a mode for writing screenplays/movies cripts.
You can toggle the editor between standard editor mode and scriptmode by pressing the CTRL+M keys. If you keep pressing this combination of keys you will switch between the modes. You will notice the footer bar change each time you press CTRL+M as per the screen capture shown below.
So, to get out of the mode as per your question. Press the CTRL+M.
I know this may sound stupid, but I found out why control+M wasn’t working for me. I was selecting the document in the binder, and pressing control+M. In order to switch modes, I had to click inside the actual document (to activate the cursor anywhere on the text). When I did that, the command worked and turned the document icon into a white icon again. 
Hello. I’m new to Scrivener and am using it to write stage plays. I have discovered the same submenu (what I now know as the Scripting Element Selection Interface) as cor_stellae. In script mode, the menu does pop up when you hit ENTER but only after placing the cursor in a specific spot. If you are already writing text of any kind pressing ENTER will work normally and just begin a new line. So that should answer one of Amber’s earlier questions in this thread.
The Scripting Element Selection Interface does not work at all. Once it pops up you cannot select any of the menu items (i.e. Action, Character, etc…). It looks like it is supposed to help you keep the “script” format and continue to write quickly without having to worry about constantly staying in the screenplay format…a la Final Draft. Am I right here?