Apologies if this is cross-posting, but I’ve had a dig through and couldn’t find an answer.
I am at a point in my novel where I want to export my index cards as a word document. I know it’s easy enough to print the cards as a PDF but I would really like my detailed index cards laid out one after the other in a document my beta reader can review and comment on using track changes.
The closest work-around I have found is selecting all my index cards in the ‘outliner’ view - and copying and pasting this into a word doc - this gives me the titles and the contents of the cards in order - but it would be great if there was an export option that indicated the levels (ie - I have my scenes nestled within chapter index cards).
I am aware that in making it a word document, I will have to manually enter in her comments etc but that’s ok as my reader doesn’t use scrivener and I wouldn’t want her to have to.
Do they actually need to look like index cards? If not, then the easiest way is to compile the document, including just the title of the scene and the synopsis.
In the compile dialogue (cmd-opt-E), choose the All Options tab, then in the sidebar click on Formatting.
On the right hand side, in the table with Level 1 etc, untick everything but Title and Synopsis. If you highlight the Document level (icon is a single document) then you should see ‘Synopsis’ in the dummy text box below. (BTW your view of the document’s structure may be different, depending on how you’ve set it up. e.g., Folders for Chapters, one level of documents for Scenes etc. If you want to exclude a section type – e.g. no Chapters, only Scenes – just untick all the boxes against the unwanted levels.)
You can do all the normal compilation formatting alterations of course. You may also want to change the Separators options.
Finally choose the output format (Compile for drop down list at the bottom).
Once you’re happy with the output (you’ll probably want to test it first), you can save them for future use by clicking on Manage Compile Format Presets in the Format As: drop down list.
There’s a Synopsis Outline Compile preset intended for exactly this purpose. You might start there and tweak as needed for your purposes.
If you want to lay them out as index cards, you’ll need to configure a custom page size and put page breaks between cards, but the Synopsis Outline preset would still be a good starting point.
