There are a few other questions about file size, but nothing I could find similar to my problem.
I have always written on Word, but I recently made the jump to Scrivener. As part of this transition, I copy/pasted my latest novel into Scrivener. The book is about 155,000 words, and originally, I copy/pasted the entire text as a single document and\I then broke it (the document) into chapters/scenes. I also had do some formatting. There are two maps, but otherwise, everything else is text.
Then, when it came to saving, it took a long time, and when I checked the file size, it was 336 MB. For me, that seems gigantic so I was wondering if this is typical. Also, I was able to look into what was being saved and over 320 MB of it was rich text files with an icon next to the file stating that it originated in Word. What are these Rich Text Files?
That’s not typical, if anything a straight copy over from Word to Scrivener should result in a net saving as the formatting, at the code level in the files, is radically more compact than Microsoft’s, whose RTF coding includes piles upon piles of internal wiring even if the document is very simple.
First, with the project closed, right-click on it in Finder and create a compressed backup along side it. We’ll poke around a bit in the project format itself, and it’s always best to keep a parallel copy in case something get damaged in doing so.
I’m assuming you’ve already examined the project’s internal files, as you refer to seeing MS Word logos on the RTF files—that just means Word is the default program that will try to open these when you double-click on them in Finder. Since you’re curious, the format itself is just a particular method of storing rich text, it’s a standard Word format as well as .doc and .docx, but unlike those is publicly documented, and intended for third-party use. It is also the standard Mac format for TextEdit and pretty much any program using the Mac’s text engine, like Scrivener. Since you are there, go ahead sort that internal Files/Docs sub-folder by file size to check for outliers. Are any of the RTF files massive? I’m doubtful of that, since the original Word file should be huge as well if so, but maybe something strange happened. Use Quick Look to make note of their content so you can look them up in Scrivener when you open the project. I don’t recommend opening them in Word. Even though they are RTF, they are still internal storage files and the program isn’t expecting anything else to touch them.
Note, you may want to temporarily disable automatic backups for this project by selecting the File/Back Up/Exclude from Automatic Backups menu command with it open. That way you can close and open this thing without waiting so long. Just remember to turn it back on.
