I just started using Scrivener and this is my first post. I was excited about it when I went through the tutorial. Not any more. I have a problem–a big problem. If I can’t fix this, I will abandon working with Scrivener completely. And I mean forever.
I have a manuscript I am editing in Microsoft Word. When I imported it into Scrivener for Windows, the margins at the start of each paragraph became about three times larger than they were in Word. Some turned out normal but most are huge. There shouldn’t be any compatibility issues between Scrivener and Word. I am extremely frustrated!
The regular Scrivener staff are on Christmas break until 5th January. If the issue is urgent than feel free to email them with URGENT in the subject line.
If you can wait we can try and help. To try and replicate this behaviour could you tell me
a) What version of Word are you using;
b) Are you importing a DOCX or DOC file;
c) Have you tried saving the word doc as a Rich Text Format (RTF) file and importing the RTF file into Scrivener?
By “margins at the start of each paragraph”, do you meant the first-line indent? I’d check first to see if you used a tab character as part of setting the indent in Word. It could be that you’ve got a wider tab set in Scrivener and also a first-line indent set on the ruler, which is compounding to make a bigger indent than you’re expecting.
The cleanest option is probably to remove all tab characters in Word (if you show non-printing characters in Word, or use Tools > Options > Show Invisibles in Scrivener and see a blue arrow at the beginning of the line, it’s a tab) using a simple find/replace to replace them with nothing, then import into Scrivener.
You can set your preferred first-line indentation by dragging the top left triangle marker on the ruler in the Editor tab of Tools > Options, and then use Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style to convert your imported documents to match that formatting. (While you’re in the editor options you may also want to set your default font, line spacing, etc.)
To answer your questions:
a) Word 2010 Starter
b) Tried to import both .doc and .docx
c) Just tried .rtf
No luck with any of those doc type changes.
Hi MM,
You are correct: “margins at the start of each paragraph” means first-line indent. When I wrote the document, sometimes Word automatically put my curser to the spot I wanted it on the next paragraph (usually with dialogue); sometimes, it did not. When it didn’t, I used the tab key. That way all my indents lined up. I’ve always subscribed to the “what you see is what you get” philosophy. I had no idea this could be an issue later.
Given this, I tried your suggestions. Unfortunately, I had no luck.
There is some compatibility issue here that on the surface seems like it should be a quick fix. But maybe not. For now, I’ll edit in Word until I get this issue resolved.
In any event, thank you both for taking the time to respond to me.
If you display non-printing characters in Word, do you see a difference in the final invisible character between paragraphs that have a tab and those that don’t? I’m guessing you may have used a line break rather than a carriage return in some cases, which would have made the new paragraph not auto-indent and caused you to use the tab character instead. In Word you create a line break using Shift+Enter, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to hit by accident.
What happened when you tried the fix suggested? The more details you can provide, the better we’ll be able to help you. This isn’t a generic compatibility issue, but specific to your document’s formatting and maybe your Scrivener settings. Do you have a sample Word document you could attach so we can see exactly what you’re working with and what happens on the Scrivener import?
Yes, the indentation problem is definitely just that you sometimes used the tab key rather than having an automatic indent. The tab character is indicated by the arrow at the start of some of your paragraphs. In Word, the tab stop is set at 0.5" and in Scrivener the tab stop is 1", so the gap is larger. I still strongly recommend you correct this by stripping the tabs and instead always using the indentation marker on the ruler to set the first line indent, since it will make formatting much easier to standardise through your project and is the norm for word processing, but for a visual fix you can set the first tab stop on the ruler in Scrivener’s editor to 0.5" for every paragraph. If you do this on the ruler in the Editor tab of Tools > Options, you’ll be able to use the Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style command to update all your existing documents at once instead of having to set the tab stop on the ruler for each document separately.