Duplicate templates

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I have a trial version of Scrivener 3.0.3 (3032) running alongside Scrivener 2.8.1.2 (26324) on MacOS 10.12.6. In the process of updating a template of mine to Scrivener 3, I saved a test project as the new template with the same name as my old template (because I didn’t realize at the time that Scrivener 2 and 3 were sharing templates). Then I had two templates with the same name that I couldn’t tell apart.

I know that I’m not supposed to be able to use new templates in an old Scrivener (so presumably seeing them there is expected), but I don’t know if I’m supposed to be able to add multiple templates with the same name—in general or in this particular situation. So if this is not a bug report, then it’s a feature request for some way to tell two templates of the same name apart–by the Scrivener version if that’s the only case in which it can happen, or by the date added if it can happen in other cases.

2

Yeah that’s possible and it won’t break anything. On the file system the files use to store the templates will have different names (Original-1, Original-2, etc.). It’s the metadata title within the template that determines what you see in the chooser. It might be easiest to right-click on one of the templates and “Reveal in Finder”, and then sort out which is which by creation date—maybe move the old ones to another folder, like “ProjectTemplates-old” so that Scrivener cannot find them.

You can also edit a template’s settings right in the chooser: right-click and select “Edit Info…”.

It is possible to end up with duplicates using 3.x alone, but you have to deliberately do so. If you save a template by the same name as one that already exists, you’ll be asked if you want to overwrite the old one or “keep both”.