I’m very new indeed to Scrivener, and I’m working my way through the documentation, so please forgive me if I’ve missed something very obvious. As far as I can tell, there’s no confirmation request when a keyword is deleted from the project keyword list, or a snapshot is deleted from the snapshot list. Nor does the “undo” function seem to retrieve either. Are these actions irrecoverable, and if so, should they have confirm requests attached to them?
Hey there HPG!
Welcome to Scrivener and welcome to the forum.
On keywords, there IS a warning pop-up if you try to delete or rename a keyword that has been assigned to a document somewhere. You are right, though, that unused keywords are deleted without ceremony.
On snapshots, you are right there is no warning, which is perhaps a bit incongruous with other ‘security measures’ in the program (eg, the use of a trash folder, and shift-del needed to delete an entire document) especially when you consider that the “-” button which deletes is only a small misplaced cursor move away from the “+” to take an additional snapshot.
L&L, one for the wish list, perhaps?
FInally, yes, you are correct that undo doesn’t undo these actions. Think of undo / redo as “typing undo” and “typing redo” rather than a program wide “action undo”. This is pretty common in word processing software. If you think about it, MS Word undo won’t cancel a save, or close a recently opened document. It’s just a bit more noticable in a program like Scrivener which has a lot more power and flexibility in the non-editing arena.
Thanks very much, pigfender (and how is that I can never think of great handles like that?). I’m really enjoying getting to know Scrivener. But I hadn’t got as far as noticing that it asks for confirmation if a keyword is in use, so that’s reassuring. I take your point completely about “undo” being limited largely to textual changes in word processors; it was just that, elsewhere, there’s a sort of unofficial convention, isn’t there, that if a destructive action only requires a single keypress you can normally expect an undo attached to it.
I see your point.
One thing I didn’t mention that does provide a bit of a long-winded undo to the snapshots question that probably isn’t obvious: Snapshots are actually stored within the individual scriv project folder. Now, the good folks at L&L would discourage you from exploring and fiddling with the files in the folder, but it does mean that your previous snapshots should be safely stored in the automatic project file backups.
That’s one for the “broken; needs fixing” list rather than the wish list. There should be a confirmation already, I’ll go and verify that it is still on the roster as a bug.
That’s nice to hear, AmberV. But in the meantime, yes, pigfender, I see what you mean about recovering a snapshot from backup, although it also looks as if you’d have to be very careful how you did it.
Yeah, it’s something I’d get tech support to help with, by it’s good to know there is an option.
Indeed 
The easiest way to do that, and indeed the best way to recover only bits of a project from a backup for whatever reason, is to copy the backup .scriv folder to a temporary location and then open it alongside the master project. If nothing has changed with the document itself other than deleting the snapshot accidentally, you could then just drag the correct one over from one binder to another. If however you have made changes that aren’t reflected in the backup, you can:
- Snapshot the current text if necessary in the master project
- Open the snapshots pane in the backup
- Copy the contents of the preview area
- Paste into the editor in the master project again
- Snapshot that
- Then roll back to the latest version using the snapshot created in step 1
Ah – thanks – that’s very helpful.