This may be explained somewhere, but I could not find out where. I am trying to import a pdf from my reference manager (currently trying out Bookends) and I cannot find out how to import it into my Scrivener Reference files. Is there a way to do this?
Thanks,
Hilary
You have two options, either copying the PDF into Scrivener, or creating an alias to the PDF stored in Bookends “Attachments Folder”.
Copying is a drag-n-drop. Bookends has a Proxy icon that makes it easy to drag the PDF as a copy to another app:
Just drag that to your binder. The limitations to this is if you are going to copy lots of PDFs your project will grow larger, and you may not want a large project if you are copying it around etc. The second problem is that this is a copy. If you make annotations like highlighting text in Bookends, these are not going to be seen in the copy.
The solution to these two issues if they bother you are to use “Research Aliases”. An alias links to the original PDF, so you can view it in Scrivener, but it is the original PDF. Section §9.2 of Scrivener’s manual explains how to do this and the benefits/limitations that apply to Aliases.
If you just need info for your references in your binder, there is another alternative. You can export the references as OPML, and import it into the Binder (useful even if you don’t have a PDF). This copies the title, abstract, note stream, citation info, URL and a back-link to bookends reference as text. If you use Alfred, I have a tool “betoopml” to make this easier: github.com/iandol/bookends-tools – select refs, trigger it and drag the OPML into your binder…
Thanks so much for helping me think through some of the pros and cons. For some reason, I could not just drag and drop – all it does is add the temporary citation to my Scrivener file. No matter what icon or what I try and click on or drag from my Inspector on Bookends, it doesn’t seem to copy and paste anything.
Hilary
Are you dragging the reference to the Research area in Scrivener, not to a document?
Are you using the latest version of Bookends? Only the proxy icon can be dragged to make a copy. You must drop it into the research section, not the manuscript part of the binder.
The other solution is to “Show in Finder” the PDF from Bookends context menu then copy into the binder.
Note: I asked Jon, the Bookends developer, if he could add support for ⌘⌥-drag of the PDF proxy icon out of Bookends. In less than two weeks, there is a new release (V13.4.5) that supports this, making the linking of PDFs into Scrivener much simpler. 8)