Font is outlined, or bolder looking after editing on Mac

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
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1

When I bring my S3 for macOS project into S3 for Windows, several documents now have “outline” applied to them. This is because I didn’t know about “Paste and Match Style”, so I was manually clicking “No Style” to get any pasted resources into my desired font, size and line spacing. For some reason, Windows now reads this copy as outlined. This is not a font compatibility issue; it only happens on copy pasted from the web.

Here’s what I’ve tried

  1. Convert Documents to Default Text Format. This does not remove character attributes, so my copy remains outlined.

  2. The Windows version of Scrivener doesn’t let me select multiple documents in Scrivenings, so I can’t just select all and toggle outline off. [Note: I thought this was coming with S3 for Windows? Did it get dropped as a feature?]

  3. Even if I could “replace format”, Find by Formatting → Character Format does not have outline as an option

I think Option 2 would be the best so I can keep anything I’ve bolded, underlined, etc., but I can’t figure out how to do this on Windows. Note that I can’t fix this on the macOS version, because the font isn’t outline in macOS.

[attachment=0]Illustration.jpg[/attachment]

Solution
I determined the issue was around leftover or hidden formatting from copy/pasting that was causing Windows to read the fonts incorrectly. My theory was that if I cleared the bad formatting prior to sending the project to Windows, then Windows wouldn’t apply the outline. The solution wasn’t around removing the additional outline that Windows added, but to stop Windows from wanting to apply the outline in the first place.

I did this (in the MacOS version) by using Documents → Convert → Text to Default Formatting at each of my top level folders (make sure you click inside the editor window before doing this. If you try this directly from Binder in MacOS, it doesn’t work.)

My settings were:

  • Remove all Styles
  • Preserve Alignment
  • Preserve Tabs and indents

This let me keep the intentional character attributes that I applied (bold, italics, underline and strikethrough), while clearing the hidden formatting that Windows didn’t like.

This is also a good time to do a Select All and change the font color to “No Color”, or Dark Mode might read font color as black, and then you can’t read your copy.

2

Despite having the same font selected and seemingly the same settings, one chapter seems emboldened. Weird, and can’t get it to change. In the great scheme of things it doesn’t make much difference as I do the final run in Vellum but it’s bugging me. :rofl:

Text 1
Text 1884×442 93.8 KB

Text 2
Text 21519×364 66.8 KB

3

Fixed the first image

4

You could try selecting all of the body text, cut it (ctrl-X), then paste it back, using paste and match style (Ctrl-Shift-V).
??

You say you can’t change it: hard to tell, but perhaps it is outlined ?
image

2 Likes
5

Spot on, that fixed it! Thanks.

No idea how it became outlined, but never mind.

1 Like
6

For some weird reason, the Windows version sometimes reads iOS or Mac text as outlined. If you’ve ever synced from that, or had someone that edited your project on those platforms, that might explain it. I haven’t seen it happen otherwise, but there may be other causes.

7

I am trying to use Scrivener on both Mac and Windows but I struggle to make it work, especially regarding styles.
I understand Mac and Win have different fonts so I updated the default font to something both platform support (Arial). I added a bunch of text on my Mac but when I open it up on Win, the style is completely bugged and I cannot fix it.
A picture tells a thousand words so here’s the issue:
https://imgur.com/a/rJ2DhyG

As you can see from the options window, the formatting is set to Arial and the text appears good in the options window.
However as you can see from just above that window, the text does not look at all good. I tried removing the style, assigning another style, another font,… but it always seem to have this highlight or bold overlay.
I can’t seem to get rid of it.
This applies to all the text I added on my Mac.
The text I initially wrote on windows, then updated on Mac, appears fine.
I even tried copy/paste formatting but that didn’t do anything either…

Can someone help me fix this without me having to redo the entire thing?

8

Isn’t this the Outline font style bug? Check the style of the text in the text style drop-down.

1 Like
9

That’s it! Thank you!
Is it a bug or did I accidently enable it without me knowing?

10

It’s in the Severity category of Known Bugs. :wink: