I wonder if there is a possibility to export in any way the settings that one have made in Scrivener to apply them to another installation.
Reason for this question: I am using Scrivener on multiple computers and on my “main” PC I have done so far all settings (spelling, auto correction and so on). Now I missed for example to adjust the setting for "replace triple periods with ellipses (…) and was going on writing on my novel. Until I found out that I had turned on the option with ellipses per default and had to search now the document to have all streamlined.
So back to the question: Is there any kind of xml file or so to copy from one installation and paste to the other one?
Go to Tools > Options or press F12 on the keyboard.
Click the manage bottom left and choose save preferences. Save this file so that you can transfer this file to other computers, either by email, usb flash drive or dropbox.
On your other machines repeat step 1.
This time click manage and select load preferences and navigate to your saved preference file.
One more on this: Is there a way to copy and spread the user dictionary over the other computers which are having Scrivener installed? I faced that “problem” because I was working today on my laptop and added a lot of words (by: learn spelling) to the dictionary, but now I am unsure if I can have the dictionary of the other computers updated with the adapted dictionary …
Navigate into your user AppData folder (or Application Data if you’re on XP) and there in the Scrivener folder you’ll find a file called “wordlists.ini”. Just copy that and place it in the same location on your other machine.
(If you don’t have hidden folders visible, you’ll need to turn that on or type in the file path exactly. For XP this will be C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Local\Scrivener\Scrivener\ and for Vista and 7 it will be C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Scrivener\Scrivener )
I am on Win7 and I found the directory: C:\Users\me\AppData\Local\Scrivener\Scrivener, but in this directory, there are only one file (userlock.id) and 4 folders: Backups, layouts, ProjectTemplates, ScriptFormats. I have changed visibility to show hidden files and folders.
Have you used “Ignore Spelling” by chance instead of “Learn Spelling”? That’s definitely where the file goes. (It’s “wordlists.ini”–I forgot the s the first time–but obviously you’d have seen it if it were there.) When you use “Learn Spelling” the words get added to your personal word list and this is where that file is stored, but Ignore Spelling doesn’t do that. In Scrivener you can go to Tools > Options… and in the Auto-Correction tab click the “View Personal Word List” button to make sure you have some entries there.
And I should’ve clarified, do this on the machine where you added all the words, so you can just copy the .ini file to your other computers. The file isn’t created until you have an item in the personal list, so you may not have one on the other machines yet; you can just put this in the top level AppData\Scrivener\Scrivener folder (where the userlock.id file is) and it will get recognized when you relaunch Scrivener on that machine.
I have checked the existence of this file on another machine, found it and copied it to the machine, where i missed it. Is it possible that the file is generated with the first add to the list?
Yes, the file isn’t created until you have a word in your personal word list (e.g. you chose “Learn Spelling” on something), so you’d only see it to copy if you had words in there.
