I am working to finish a book manuscript that an editor has reviewed and commented on. I imported a Word file of one of the chapters into Scrivener, made the changes I wanted, and compiled it for Word format.
The result looks nothing like the Word file I imported. The formatting is all over the place. If I try simply copy and pasting from Scrivener into Word, it pastes the comments into the text of the document rather than keeping them as comments.
Is there a simple way that I can import the formatting from the original Word document into Scrivener and use it for the compile function when I send it back out to Word? Ideally I could save this format and apply it as I edit each remaining chapter of the book.
To clarify, in your topic you refer to importing and exporting styles to Scrivener. Are you referring to the formal concept of a stylesheet? It doesnāt sound like it from your description, as you donāt mention taking any steps that might be involved in looking into that.
Is there a simple way that I can import the formatting from the original Word document into Scrivener and use it for the compile function when I send it back out to Word?
For the first part of that, Chapter 9, Gathering Material, in the user manual PDF is a good place to start. The first subsection in that chapter covers file import, which is what youāre looking to do. You will see that copy and paste is mentioned as one of the methods there, but it is listed last for a reason. Using full file import, as described in options (1) or (2) is almost always going to produce a more accurate result.
As for the second part of your query, this thread describes how to use the compiler more simply. But, if you have no idea what is going on, it would be a good idea to quickly go through the sections in the interactive tutorial (Help menu) on compiling, as this kind of basic approach is one of the very first things we introduce you to (understandably).
Thank you. Iām a long-time Scrivener user and am familiar with the concept of compiling. But perhaps I could have been clearer:
What Iām asking for is whether there is a way of importing the formatting of a Word document along with the document, and keeping it the exact same upon export, without having to change every single thing in the compile format by hand. Is there a way of simply keeping the format of what imports stable upon export, and saving this as a āMy formatsā so that I can use it for all chapters of the manuscript. Thank you.
I have tried using the āpreserve formattingā option to maintain the format of the word document I imported and split into sections, but the compile function is still overriding it. I am looking for a simple solution if possible as this is a 130,000 word manuscript, in 8 different chunks, so the possible time loss is large. Thanks.
In the same situation, I do not import the editorās version. I view it alongside Scrivener and make changes myself in Scrivener. It maintains metadata, links, formatting, document notes, etc., and it ensures that Iāve given my own thought to every change. Iāve found that editors are often wrong, or at least, their style is not my style.
I understand what you are looking to do. The link that I provided should have helped in finding the right compile settings to use. Whether one is experienced in using the compiler or not, they might miss that there is a simple āpass-thruā compile Format to select from in the left sidebar (as well as just creating a new one from scratch).
Or another way of putting it is that the compilerās default starting point is to make very few modificationsāthe preset formats we provide as examples are the result of much effort to add settings toward the goal of deliberately making widespread changes formatting. Starting from one of those and peeling everything back by hand to work more like the default is counterproductive. One might as well just start with āblankā (to compare to project templates).
That said, as for whether one might get exactly the same formatting, probably not, even with that. This is a fundamental flaw in using word processing software for all of this kind of stuff. They are enormously complicated, and no two programs do the same things with the same files. Routing your file through other word processors, or even the same software on two different operating systems, is almost always going to cause loss or transformation of formatting.
As someone else noted above, if the document needs to be exactly the same as it was from Word then you should not open it in other programs, and should edit your Scrivener source material alongside the Word window, as a reference.