Dangerously easy to delete a keyword....

[December]

Small tweak this, but I’m wondering if you’ve considered adding a warning message when one attempts to delete a keyword ('Are you sure you want to delete this keyword and remove it from all the files it’s attached to?). It’s terrifyingly easy to click on the delete button by accident — and if one relies on keywords to organise one’s files into multiple topics (awkward to do within the Binder structure itself without aliases grin), a moment of inattention can wipe out a lot of structuring! Just a thought…

[AmberV]

I might be missing a scenario that isn’t as straightforward as what I tried, but doesn’t the software already do what you are requesting? Here was my test:

1. Created a blank test project, and added two keywords to it via the Project Keywords pane: “One” and “Two”.
2. Dragged “One” to the “untitled document” to assign it.
3. Pressed the delete key to remove it.

A warning appears, letting me know that the keyword is in use and that deleting it will also remove the assignment from all documents in the project.

Granted, I can delete “Two”, which is not assigned to anything at all—but that’s no big deal. I just hit ⌘Z if I make a mistake in that case. I can do that for the other case as well, to get the keyword back, but undo doesn’t help with reassignment (hence the warning).

[December]

Hmmm. Same thing for me too — I’m just an idiot, I guess. Must have been wrong in thinking the keyword I deleted was still assigned to a bunch of things! (Can’t go back and confirm this obviously, but clearly that must be what happened). So sorry to bother you! Feel free to delete this thread…

[eilonwy77]

I have a similar question. I’ve gone crazy with keywords and have many layers of parent/child nesting. If I am in the keyword interface, there are three buttons at the bottom. One to add a sibling keyword, one to add a child keyword, and one to delete a keyword. I tried to make a child keyword, the middle button, but accidentally clicked the delete a keyword button. And then the entire category of keywords that I had had selected at the time went poof. I couldn’t undo anything. It was a small category, so I’m relieved I didn’t delete a big one. But even if I recreate it, the keywords won’t be applied to the documents anymore, and this story is 300k words long.

I’ve spent a few days trying to figure it out, and to come up with an alternate plan. I was thinking that at least when you accidentally delete a folder in the binder, it just goes to trash and is easily recoverable. So I spent time recreating a test section of the keyword hierarchy in files within the binder. I considered attaching them as bookmarks to the specific text they pertained to. But I am looking, and don’t think there is a way to search which documents have which bookmarks? Nor do they have a column in the outline view. Maybe stick them in a different metadata field? I’ll have to experiment. I feel so close to envisioning the perfect system and knowing how to use it, but just can’t quite figure it out yet.

I’ve been moving this project from ios to the pc version of scrivener, and there are so many neat features. I really love it. And I’ve reading through the text of the story, and developing the keyword outline has been very insightful. I keep pondering how best to use them. But I’m also afraid of deleting a bunch of them in one go on accident.

I wonder if I’m missing something? It’s possible I clicked some option somewhere to dismiss the deletion warning message? I get warned if I delete a keyword in a document, but in the interface I don’t.

Thank you for any ideas you might have!

–katie

[AmberV]

I think the problem here is that it looks like undo protection was never added to the Keywords list, so that’s really the missing ingredient here. I’ll make sure that’s written up. And yes, I do think that branch you deleted must not have been used yet. There is no way to dismiss this warning in future uses, it always appears if any of the selected (implicit or explicit) keywords are assigned.

So, if you want to make it a little “safer”, you could just use Ctrl+A to select everything with the whole tree expanded, and drag and drop the whole lot of them onto one item where it doesn’t really matter, like your templates folder or something obvious that you can mentally dismiss if it pops up in search results. Then at least you’ll get the warning.