Hi,
I can’t get the hang of this. I type a few words in a text file within Scrivener, they are ‘Times New Roman’ font is size 12 and bold, this is set in the Scrivener Editor options.
I now select the text and copy. Now several lines lower I paste (Cntrl+V) and the font changes to ‘MS Shell Dlg 2’ font, and is size 11. Cntrl+Shift+V also does the same.
What am I doing wrong? Where is the MS Shell font coming from when the Scrivener options are set to Times New Roman? If I click and type anywhere in the text doc then the font is Times 12, as it should be.
I love Scrivener but I have had this problem across several versions for several years. Currently running the version that updated when I started Scrivener today 1.6.1.0.
All advice gratefully received
This isn’t something I can reproduce in testing, but I’ve seen a similar report that is probably the same bug. Would you be able to make a short screencast demonstrating the problem? It would really help if we can see the exact set up of your editor, how you’re selecting text (seems weird, but whether you select right to left or left to right, whether it’s within the middle of a paragraph or at the first or last word, could all be an aspect in triggering this), how and where you’re pasting it, etc. If you could also open the Options first and show the Editor settings there as the first step, that would be great. The more details we have, the more likely we can find and fix the problem.
If you haven’t done a screen recording before, a quick online search should bring up some different options for free software you can use. I find Jing simple to use; it does require you to sign up for a free account, but they then provide you some online storage space so you can make the screencast and immediately upload it, then share the link. Feel free to post here or to send straight to windows.support AT literatureandlatte DOT com if you’d rather, and just provide a link back to this forum thread so whoever picks it up can read up the history. Please also mention what version of Windows you’re running.
Thank you!
Hi Jen and Alex
I believe this is a phenomenon of RTF content that has been pasted in from the HTML clipboard. We had a related discussion in September:
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/problem-with-cutting-and-pasting-from-webpages/23562/6
An easy way to reproduce the behavior Alex describes is simply to copy a few lines from this forum in your browser, and paste them into Scrivener’s editor. Now cut a few words in the segment you just clipped, and paste them back in place. You should see them displayed in MS Shell Dlg 2, notwithstanding your default Scrivener typeface or the HTML typeface. Of course you’ll get the same result if you paste the words elsewhere in the document.
As we noted in September, HTML can be arbitrarily complex, and a conversion-on-the-fly to RTF is likely to insert characteristics not native to Scrivener. Interesting example: if a link you copy from your browser includes a tool tip, that tool tip will sometimes display in Scrivener’s editor…but not beyond the next autosave, when the RTF is stripped to Scrivener’s subset. It’s no big secret that Scrivener includes some off-the-shelf components, and that RTFs vary widely, so some of this is to be expected.
Anyway, your best bet after an HTML paste is to clean it up, first by cutting and pasting again within the editor, then by running Document>Convert>Formatting.
I view the appearance of MS Shell Dlg 2 as a helpful indicator that the RTF in the editor is not Scrivener native, and a reminder to make it so.
Rgds – Jerome