Aaaggghhh!!! I have just spent ages working on the wording of some points in a synopsis. Having decided that the wording of the first of these was spot on, I went to copy and paste it into the main section, to save typing. Accidentally clicked on the […] button next to the heading “Synopsis” in the Inspector - and my brilliant words have disappeared! Along with the rest of the synopsis entry (which was complicated and I can’t even remember everything that was in it)! Can you hear me screaming from where you are?
I know I’m a new user, but surely it can’t be as easy as this to screw up your work irretrievably? How can I get my synopsis thingy back, please? Undo is greyed out. Please don’t say “from a back-up” because (a) I haven’t done one since last night (which seems perfectly reasonable to me) and (b) I have done other stuff elsewhere in the files in the meantime, which I don’t want to lose.
I hope you haven’t touched anything since you did this, otherwise you won’t be able to get it back. Assuming you just made the mistake and haven’t touched anything since, do this:
Click into the synopsis area of the index card, then select Edit > Undo.
I know you said Undo was greyed out, but this will be because the index card did not have the focus. Scrivener has multiple undo stacks. Basically, each main text has its own undo manager associated with it. This means that if you make edits to the main text, you can undo those edits even if you made them earlier in a session and have looked at numerous other documents since.
However, this only applies to the main text. Everything else - the binder, the index cards, the notes and so on and so forth - are all associated with one central undo manager, and this gets wiped out when you switch between documents. (Undo is a complicated and tricky business, which is why it has to work this way. When you change a document, lots of things get swapped out and aren’t available to undo any more, which can really foul things up if the undo manager doesn’t get cleared.)
I hope this helps. If not, at least you know for next time. I’ve made a note to include a paragraph on this in the Help file.
Thank you for the amazingly prompt reply. Unfortunately, of course, it’s too late, because the first thing I did on seeing no Undo was to have a look in the Trash. Which, according to my understanding of your explanation, means that the Undo stack was wiped at that stage. Oh, well.
Is there any way of disabling the […] button, please (in Preferences or something)? Or is there some way of getting the system to warn me that in selecting the auto-write feature I will lose my existing text (obviously not needed if the box is empty)? Does Scrivener interact with Quicksilver at all? Is it possible to get such deletions written to Clipboard or to Trash so that I could get them back by other means? Not that I’m planning on doing it again, of course! But you never know…
It’s such a shame, because I was really pleased with Scrivener; first impressions were so favourable that I bought it almost instantly (and nearly posted here earlier today to say as much) - and now the shine’s come off a bit. I suppose I’ll just have to learn to be more careful in typing. Lovely product in other respects, though, and I think the Corkboard is not only inspired but inspirational.