How could Scrivener insert (left) the cursor at the last position (e.g. at the end of a document) when I open a project / Scrivener / an item in the Binder?
Scrivener’s practice pretty much throughout the program, I think, is to place the cursor at its most recent position the last time the document was accessed. The intended convenience of this is obvious, of course; and I’ve found Scrivener to be astonishingly good at restoring the most recent state of a document (even including the persistence of selected text in a project that had been closed). But this does mean that if you want the cursor always to be at the end of the document when you return to it, you have to accomplish that yourself by placing it there when you leave the document (or close the project or Scrivener).
Thank you, David.
Actually it would be enough to find the cursor where I left it the last time, e.g. at the end of a document. But when I leave a doc with the cursor at the end the cursor is not at the end / where I left it the last time. So may be there is a manner to have the cursor next time at the place I left it.
Many thanks again
That’s surprising to me. I always find the cursor at the place where I left it. Perhaps someone else here has an idea; since I haven’t seen this happen, I don’t know what to suggest.
Alright, many thanks anyway.
Yeah that’s the way it should be working. You need to sometimes use Ctrl-Tab to switch your focus into the editor though, for example if you click in the binder then the keyboard is in the binder not the editor, but if you use the mouse to click into the editor that moves the cursor to where you click, so the shortcut gets you into the editor without moving the cursor. That case is obvious, but there are some occasions where that is necessary where it shouldn’t be—some limitations we can hopefully workaround in the future—like using the Back or Forward shortcut leaving the keyboard focus in limbo rather than already in the editor. Maybe that is what you are running into?
I do not have any idea. I just tried: I put the cursor at the end of a doc, closed Scrivener, opened it. The editor shows the doc somewhere in the middle. Now I didn’t click into the doc but clicked the scroll bar slider and scrolled to the end of the doc and saw the cursor is at the end. But not focused.
STRG+TAB do not help here.
When I click different docs in the Binder and go back the cursor is not shown anymore, when I press STRG+TAB it is. Can I Scrivener show the cursor without pressing those keys?
Is this a problem that is happening in every project? I would try in the tutorial for example. The thing is the text selection / cursor position is stored directly into the binder item, it should be in theory as stable and as much a part of the item as its title, label and so on.
Yes, it seems to be in each of the projects.
Are you using version 1.9.7? (You can check at the bottom for the Help > About Scrivener window.)
It sounds like the cursor position is being saved correctly, but the editor isn’t scrolling correctly. Normally it should scroll so that the text where the cursor is placed is visible, though it may not be in the centre or top area of the editor. The cursor itself won’t show until focus is moved to the editor, so you won’t see it when first opening a project (even if you left the focus in the editor, it will be moved to the binder; this is one of the technical limitations mentioned earlier). Clicking into the scrollbar or using the Ctrl+Tab shortcut are both methods of moving the focus to the editor, but in the case of the scrollbar, you’re overriding the automatic “scroll to the cursor” behaviour that should occur if you switch focus via Ctrl+Tab.
That said, the editor should be scrolling automatically when you open the project or click a document’s title in the binder to load it in the editor. The only case I know where this doesn’t occur is if you’re viewing multiple documents or a folder or document group in Scrivenings mode. Given the way this mode works, it can’t save the cursor position or automatically scroll to your last location when the group is reloaded (as when the project is closed and reopened).
If you’re selecting a folder or a document that has subdocuments, this might be the problem you’re seeing (or at least complicating the problem). In the main toolbar, the leftmost icon on the set of three showing the group modes–text, corkboard, and outliner–would be highlighted yellow and show a set of three papers instead of just one if you’re in Scrivenings mode. Any chance that’s the case here?
Yes, I do.
Sorry, no, it isn’t (respectively I haven’t encountered that issue that way). I was referring to none scrivening mode only.
Thanks for checking. This is strange behavior, and I can’t think of anything that might be causing it. Try this: Leave the insertion point at the end of the document, then close the project. When you open the project, before you click anywhere else, choose View > Move Focus To > Editor. That will switch focus without disrupting the insertion point placement. Then select Edit > Find > Jump to Selection. That should scroll the editor to the current cursor position. Does that work?
Yes, that worked.