I may have to transition to Linux in the near future, and I want to prepare by exporting my Scrivener projects in .odt format. However, I don’t seem to understand how to do this except a chapter at a time, which is extremely inefficient. When I highlight the ‘Manuscript’ tag that all the sub-folders are in, and try to export, I get good organization of sections and chapters, but the files are missing the first couple of hundred words. What am I doing wrong?
Okay, I may have found the problem. it seems that the export mechanism makes OOW open in ‘facing pages’ mode, and the first page is always blank. For some reason the first page with actual text on it is presented off-screen to the right, but the pages underneath are just single pages, so it appears that the beginning of the text is missing. Is there a setting in Scrivener to just have one-page-at-a-time format? I’m still working on these projects, so the side-by-side is kind of awkward.
You’re confusing Export with Compile.
Compile creates one document from all Sections in the Binder following the Compile Format settings and Formatting.
Export saves sections as single documents in a flat structure following the Formatting in the Editor.
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No, that’s not my issue. I don’t want to compile projects into a single document when they are still being worked on, I want to preserve the chapter structure. But I also don’t want to export a 70 kiloword project one 2k chapter at a time. However, THAT PART works fine, if everything I want is in the Manuscript folder, and I choose that as the file to export. My original problem was, I thought, missing data at the beginning of each chapter, but turns out to be that the exported chapters get opened in Libre Office in ‘book format,’ ie, showing two facing pages on the screen at once. The blank page at the beginning confused me. I see now that I’m not missing data, but the dual-page format makes it harder for me to work on the document, and I haven’t figured out how to make it go away, or prevent it from happening.
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That sounds like a question for LibreOffice. There’s nothing in Scrivener that defines the display mode in third-party software.
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Never used Libre Office myself, but if it’s at all similar to Word, there will be some setting to change the interface presentation. In my version of Word, you can choose between Read Mode, Print Layout, Web Layout, Outline View, and Draft View.
What you’re describing is similar to Word’s Read Mode. I typically work in Word’s Print Layout or Draft View modes.
So check your Libre Office settings; particularly, if there’s a View menu, you’ll likely find your answer there.
Best,
Jim
I don’t think Scrivener is setting the two-page layout setting in the ODT files (or more accurately, the Aspose conversion engine that it uses to convert from its native RTF). At least, in my copy of LibreOffice on Linux, they load in single-page layout.
I’ve tried exporting an ODT from Scrivener, and decompressed it, loading the settings.xml file and saving that externally as a reference. I then loaded the ODT in LibreOffice, deliberately changed it to two-page book layout (using the third button, closest to the zoom slider), and saved it. I then examine the two copies side by side, and found this setting in the copy saved by LO:
<config:config-item config:name="ViewLayoutColumns" config:type="short">2</config:config-item>
<config:config-item config:name="ViewLayoutBookMode" config:type="boolean">true</config:config-item>
These lines are an addition, they weren’t specified at all in the original copy, and I’ve confirmed they are the responsible settings for this. If I change the columns to 1 and the book mode to false then I get the typical single column of pages look. If I set the columns to 3 and keep book mode false I get three pages across, but no recto/verso emulation.
Anyway, that’s probably all way more of a technical answer than you needed, but if you know how to unzip .odt files and examine their contents, then you could at least verify if your exported copies are the same. There may be a default you can change somewhere? I ran a few quick web searches but didn’t come across anything to share, but I am running a slightly older version (Debian life).
As an aside, it is not too difficult to get Scrivener for Windows running on Linux these days.
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That’s what I suspected, but since when I use Libre Office as a general rule it opens in a single page mode, I thought I’d ask.
@JimRac I found out that Libre Office changed its default from single page to side-by-side in a recent update. The View menu only offers ‘Normal’ and ‘Web’ as options, but it turns out that down in the lower right corner, in the toolbar across the bottom than nobody uses and is usually obscured by my having my Windows toolbar on the bottom, there’s a little thingy to select single page. Whew! Problem solved.
@AmberV Thanks for the explanation. I did find a way to solve the problem, but whoever designed the Libre Office interface needs a stern talking to (see above). I’m not sure if Scrivener is contributing or not, but it doesn’t matter since I found the solution.
Thanks all!
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Strange. I also use LibreOffice (to make PDFs with tables of contents) and my documents open just fine. I have the latest version.