Hi, This is probably a dumb question but I don’t want to risk exporting without being sure of the answer. If I export an entire manuscript as .rtf for editing in Word, does the entire manuscript remain in Scrivener? I want to just play for a while in Word to see whether I want to continue that way but do not want to lose everything if I want to keep going in Scrivener. I don’t think I will do a final export to Word yet so re-importing revised files to Scrivener is probably not something I need to be able to do. I guess that would entail breaking the complete text up into the original bits that were in Scrivener…Any thoughts on this would be welcome.
Getting your Scrivener project out into Word won’t affect the Scrivener file at all, so you can do it as many times as you like.
(BTW, there are two ways to get stuff out of Scrivener: exporting (which is basically simply copying the files out) and compiling, which is the preferred way to prepares the document ready for final polishing off in Word etc. It’s probably Compile that you want. If you’re not sure about what compiling does – and why it should almost always be the way you output from Scrivener – have a look at the Interactive Tutorial. If you are sure, then I apologise!)
Yes, you most likely do want compile if you are looking for a linear output of all the pieces in your draft. Export will mimic the folder and file structure of your outline, and so if you have 80 pieces in your draft you’ll have 80 .rtf files to contend with in Word. With Compile you will have one: all of the pieces sewn together. Compile can also do nice things like add titles and tidy up the formatting, all without changing the stuff in the project. For your own personal proofing, you probably won’t want to put too much effort into it, so try playing with a few of the provided presets in the “Format As” drop-down menu of the compiler until you get one that is close enough to work with.
Just make sure all of the stuff you want in your final file is in the Draft folder. That’s what the compiler uses and it ignores all else (with a few advanced exceptions).
Thanks a lot. Glad you told me to use compile - I’d hate to have multiple rtf word files to manipulate. I guess that would only be useful if I want to reimport back to Scrivener. The main thing for me is that Scrivener keeps my file intact. Cheers, Lindy