When I want to duplicate a freeform corkboard : most of the time it doesn’t work. I mean, the original folder will be duplicated, but the order of the index cards on the corkboard will not be the same, it will be all messed up.
Sometimes it does work still, I don’t know under what circumstances, usually only the first time I will try it. But if I try it a another time, boom, impossible to duplicate the original order of my index cards on the freeform corkboard again.
Any idea on what is happening?
Am I the only one with this problem?
Thanks in advance for your help!
Maybe with a short screen capture, my problem will be easier to understand:
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How is Scrivener supposed to know that you want the two Corkboards to be the same?
While the standard Corkboard directly reflects the structure of the Binder, the freeform Corkboard is more of an ad hoc, visual arrangement. It’s a view of the current folder, but it has no connection to the underlying Binder structure. (By design. The whole point of using it is that you’re trying to show non-hierarchical relationships that the Binder can’t capture.)
So, when you duplicate the underlying folder, you have duplicated the documents within it and their arrangement in the Binder, but there’s no connection to the original folder’s purely visual freeform layout.
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Thanks for your reply!
Well, I’m not of programmer, so I’m sure there are technical impossibilities I’m not aware of, but, as a user at least, I guess it would make sense that when you duplicate a corkboard you’ve created in freeform mode, the “visual arrangement” that freeform allows would be duplicated too with the duplicated folder. Because: why duplicating a “visual arrangement” you haven’t created?
To me, it would be usefull to be able to try different versions of a structure in freeform view very quickly, without having to rebuild the entire corkboard from scratch each time.
The good news is: I’ve found a workaround for this problem.
Here are the steps, if anyone’s interested:
- Create a new folder (corkboard 2), view it in Freeform corkboard mode, make sure that all the corkboard settings are more or less the same than those of corkboard 1.
- Open both corkboards in Split view mode.
- In corkboard 1, select all your index cards, and alt + drag’n drop them to corkboard 2 (make sure that “Option-dragging creates duplicates” is selected in the Global Settings…).
WARNING: you’d better NOT drag’n dropping them on a border of corkboard 2, otherwise the index cards could be crushed (and you would loose the visual arrangement you were preciesly trying to keep). Choose instead an rather empty area. Then, if needed, Select All index cards and move them to make it look like corkboard 1.
(This whole operation is not as tedious as it seems.)
Note that the Corkboard (freeform or otherwise) is not an independent entity. Duplicating a Corkboard also duplicates all of the underlying Binder items. And, again, the Binder structure is the ultimate source of the Corkboard structure.
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I understand.
Nevertheless, sometimes I manage to duplicate a folder’s Freeform corkboard structure just by “Duplicating” the folder. Usually it works just once, and when I do exactely the same thing a second time, it doesn’t work anymore. (Actually I did manage to do this again today - just once). To me, that’s a hint that THIS SHOULD BE possible under certain circumstances (but I really can’t understand those).
Thanks for the report! I can easily replicate the problem where duplicating the first time in a session works, but after that point it resets the card positions to default. The randomness is a result of how the bug seems to be in how too many entries for card positions are added to duplicated items. If you duplicate from a folder with invalid references to cards it doesn’t actually have on its corkboard, it fails. This condition isn’t super predictable (I’ve seen the original folder get “damaged” in this way, as well as the duplicated folders, and I’ve seen invalid folders get cleaned up on reload, which would make them work again once).
I’ll get it added to the list.
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Thanks for watching this!
This bug has been addressed in the last update I guess. Now you can duplicate freeform corkboard seemlessly! Cool! Thanks Scrivener team!
But a new bug and a critical problem have appeared instead, which make it almost impossible to use the Freeform Corkboard extensively:
- The bug: In a Freeform Corkboard, if you alt + drag and drop an Index Card (= duplicate it), you will loose your freeform shape. All your Index Cards will suddenly be grouped to the left. That’s to say you loose all your work.
- The critical problem: If you create new Index Card in you Freeform Corkboard, it will always be created to the far left of you corkboard. So you always have to grab it there and bring it back to where you were in your corkboard, that’s to say to the far right in my case. If you corkboard is rather large, it is so tiring and just unusable! Expected behavior: a new index card would be created near the current or last selected index card, or at least somewhere on the actual screen view of your corkboard.
Thanks in advance to consider this problems!
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Oh that’s not good! Thanks for catching that, I’ll get it filed. In the meanwhile it does look like you can duplicate in the binder (with either the shortcut or Opt-drag), without disturbing the layout. You would then drag the duplicate where it should go. So that’s your workaround for now.
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Any update on this problem?
To answer your last workaround, AmberV: it works SOMEHOW. Yes, you CAN Opt + drag and drop a document from the Binder to the Corkboard, and it will not create a mess or making you jump at the beginning of the corkboard. But only IF you do your Opt+Drag and Drop in this precise order : Drag (then) Opt (then) Drop. If you Opt (then) Drag (then) Drop (as I tend to do most of the time), it will open the document, you will have to exit it, and then you will be again at the beginning of the corkboard (unless you have selected a document of your corkboard before this operation). A lot of quirks in this workaround I think!
Would be much more elegant in my opinion if the two problems I mentionned in my previous post would be solved.
So, much appreciated if you ever consider fixing those in a future update! Thanks a lot in advance!