i have been searching for a way to associate a collection (search or standard) with a specific document all within a scrivener project.
the ideal would be: dragging the collection name from the binder/show collections column into a document’s “document reference”, thus linking that document to many others within the project via a collection.
i realize that i can pull (one by one by one) individual links to other documents into a document’s “document references”, but i need the flexibiity and functionality of a collection. collections can be easily created, rearranged, content viewed as a whole, changed en masse according to search criteria.
also creating my 200+ collections is possible of course, but this creates a collection organizational mess since they are not directly linked to a document in any way other than a manual collection hunt.
please, are there any solutions?
thanks for the help… and the much appreciated great product.
I think you’re going to have to supply more information. Is there an example scenario you could share that would show what you want to accomplish?
For instance, I’m beginning to use character keywords to note when Joe is in a scene, and also when he’s mentioned. I also add both keywords to a character sketch document, so that when I do a keyword search that includes all of the binder’s contents, the character sketch shows up as well. I’ll move the characters folder to the top of the binder so that the sketch is at the top for easy reference. And since I can add any number of keywords to a document, I can have searches based on Joe and Karen that include some of the same documents, and I can also track other non-character information with keywords (location, day of week, important items…)
Edit: For more on using keywords (which can then be used in search-based collections), read this entry: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=19076
In fact you can copy them to doc references all at once. Just click “lock in place” on the editor whose inspector is displaying the references. Then select all in your collection and drag through. Getting those references back out into a collection or a multi-select is the major nuisance.
This similar suggestion got a most gracious reply, albeit an overoptimistic one (depending on the meaning of “update.”)
BTW, collections work brilliantly with Express Keys. If you have a collection called &Travel and it’s the only T, you can get an item into it with Alt-DDT, and view it with Alt-VTT .
great stuff and good news since
-i am not alone in this
-and there is the amberV response that the developers are on top of it.
i did consider keywords as a way to create collections but… the numbers discourage this approach. 200+ documents each needing references to maybe 10 other documents. or more. and the referenced document set needs to be malleable… like a collection.
as mentioned in jeromes response link: “These are groups far too numerous and narrow to be organized around Keywords or around project-level saved Collections.” Yep.
i dont know what i need until i know what i need, so collections seem the ideal vehicle.
collections, as mentioned, are very versatile: multi-selected, viewed in the Outliner, edited in Scrivenings, relocated in the binder in groups, easily added to, deleted, created via searches…
so, yes, ideally a document’s document references could contain a link to a standard or search collection. a document level collection not a project level collection.
thanks for the responses and thanks developers for considering this issue.