How to print the "Outliner" view (not the document "outline")

Scrivener Newcomer Central
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[Sorry if this is a duplicate topic. After 15 minutes of searching the forum, I gave up…]

I’m in the early stages of my project. I am using the “Outliner” view to organize my thoughts.

I want to print the Outliner view so that I can share it for review by a friend. I don’t see any way to order a print of the Outliner while I have the Outliner view active.

In File→Compile, I see some options for printing the “outline”. But I do not get the entire Outliner view–only the few scattered bits of text that have numbered headings: 1.0, 2.0, etc.

Is there a way to print the entire Outliner view?

Scrivener 3.1.6; Windows 11

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I would start with a search like this. But since that’s a pretty basic search, I’m guess you already tried something like that and are maybe looking for something that doesn’t exist?

One thing though: I don’t know why the Print command is disabled for you when the outliner is active, that is definitely something you should be able to do. You can read more about it in Chapter 26 of the user manual PDF, and specifically in §26.3, Printing Outlines. There you will not only find the various options available for doing so, but a tip on how to get the outliner data to a spreadsheet if you want a more detailed printout.

The only thing I can think of that might make that not work is that it isn’t really active—by that I mean, it is where keyboard input would go if you press for example an Arrow key. If the selection in the outliner goes up or down with the arrow keys, then it is active and it should allow you to print the content.

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Okay, I see the instructions in 26.3 for printing the current outliner view. I’m told to click File–>Print…

First, there is no “Print…” option in the File menu. So I’m guessing the manual is out of date here. There is “Print Current Document”, so I will use that.

Second, the manual says to begin by displaying the material I wish to print in the outliner, then click File–>Print. Most of time, Print Current Document is disabled (grayed out). Twice in my poking around I have seen Print Current Document enabled, but I have not figured out the pattern that enables it.

Third, when it does print, it prints the entire document (not just what is in the viewer), and it includes text material that is not in the outliner. This is not what I want at all. I only want the outliner material to print. I want to print to a pdf file send it for review. The text that is not in the outliner is a distraction from this purpose.

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^^^ By the way, thanks for your help, Amber.

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Thanks, I’ve made a note to review and fix the manual’s references to the command name in this chapter. It would indeed be the “Print Current Document” command in this case.

Third, when it does print, it prints the entire document (not just what is in the viewer), and it includes text material that is not in the outliner.

That is odd, it sounds like perhaps it is printing what you would get if you switched from Outliner mode to Scrivenings (Ctrl1). That would indeed print the main text content of the items, rather than a simple outline of them, but it definitely should not be happening if it is the Outliner view (Ctrl3) in front of you.

Let’s try this, just to make sure we’re on the same page, and if it works for you, perhaps you can apply the steps to your own project:

  1. Open Help ▸ Interactive Tutorial (creating a copy if need be).
  2. Select the “Draft” folder at the top level, and hit Ctrl3 to switch to Outliner view.
  3. Click into the outline, to make sure it is active. I’ll select “The Basics” at the very top, for example (but it doesn’t matter what you select, so long as the selection is there and not over in the binder sidebar).
  4. To test, use File ▸ Print Preview. You should get five pages of outline, starting with the first batch of items in “The Basics”.
  5. If that looks fine, then close that window, and try File ▸ Print Current Document and print to PDF using the Microsoft driver (sorry, I’m on Windows 10, so I don’t know exactly how that part will look in 11, but trust you know the way).

The result, for me, is this (with default settings):

print_tutorial_outline.pdf (183.6 KB)

That will include synopses, if you don’t want them, there is a checkbox for that in File ▸ Print Settings, in the Outline tab. There you can also add various metadata, word counts, change the font, etc.

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Bingo!

Here is what I was doing:

  • Click on the “Introduction” text entry on the binder. Under the Introduction text entry is a set of nested text entries. I want to print Introduction and all the entries under it.
  • Click on the “Outliner” icon in the toolbar–same as Ctrl 3.
  • Click on the File menu. The Print Current Document item is disabled.

What I need to do:

  • Click on the “Introduction” text entry on the binder.
  • Click on the “Outliner” icon in the toolbar–same as Ctrl 3.
    –> Click into the outliner view.
  • Click on the File menu. Now the contents of the outliner view is printed to the pdf file (via Microsoft Print to PDF).

Thanks.

The missing detail was that I needed to click into the outliner view after clicking .

That is why the Print Current Document command was disabled in the File menu, by the way.

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Note to self: Check for straggly text at the bottom of the reply. Can’t edit after posting.
:slight_smile:

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Final comment: Looking at 26.3 in the manual again, it is not clear that the user must click in the outliner window to enable printing of its contents.

Thanks again.

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All right! Glad you got it working, and that the outline print feature is good for what you need.

That’s true, the chapter is meant more to build upon its introduction, rather than reiterating all of the details within each subsection of it. I probably should have pointed you to the introduction of Ch. 26 first, which states:

In most cases (compile, notably excluded) all you need to print a selection is
to use the standard File ▸ Print… command (Ctrl+P), though do make sure that you click into the editor you wish to print from first.

That aside, it really shouldn’t be so difficult, which is part of what I think you might have been encountering with how the command seemed disabled when it shouldn’t be. There is a bit of a bug, or you might say a design flaw, in how it is currently put together, in that way too much clicking is necessary. It should only be necessary when switching views, but not when doing things within those views, which is where it starts to break down. For example if you click the Back button in the editor header bar, your cursor should not go into the void and require you to click again into the editor to make it active. It should just stay active until you yourself click somewhere else, like into the Synopsis card in the inspector.

But yeah, overall, it’s good to know Scrivener is the type of program that does require you to switch views by hand. Some programs regard things like sidebars as pure navigation tools, where it is impossible for focus to remain there and the cursor is always in the main view to the right. We let you choose, so that you can sit in the binder for half an hour and brainstorm out some outline, or do some organisation—it’s meant to be a workspace.

Can’t edit after posting.

You should get that privilege added automatically if you hang out just a bit more. Brand new user accounts cannot edit their own posts, as that is a very common spam tactic. Post some ChatGPT response that is vaguely plausible, then an hour later once the mods aren’t looking any more, splice a link in.

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I appreciate the fast response. As to the manual, technical writers are stuck in a kind of limbo between two worlds, neither of which is quite real. On one hand, you have to expect users to read the whole manual, or you will be constantly repeating yourself. On the other hand, nobody reads the manual so why bother doing a thorough job? In this case, I jumped into the manual at the specific function I needed and thrashed about, rather than go back and read the context. (I designed and built automatic machinery for decades, and often wrote the user manuals. A user manual was required to ship with every machine, but rarely did a customer tell me he had read the manual. Users did what I just did–poke around for a while, then call for support.)

I like the flexibility of the software. On this particular project, which concerns metaphysics instead of physics, I have been thrashing about for months in Word trying to get my thoughts out of the details and organized from the top down. I started using Scrivener maybe ten days ago. The outlining tool has been very helpful. I now have a working outline for the project.

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