I would like to make it that when I open Scrivener, the Blank Project Template opens automatically.
Is this possible?
Hello.
Scrivener’s options allow users to reopen projects that were open on the previous quit, or to open the template chooser.
I believe that most writers have a limited number of projects that they work on and probably don’t need to regularly start new projects.
Also, if the sytem opened with a blank project each time, that would need to be given a name so that it could be saved, and it would also add to the list of projects included in automatic backups. All of that might create a lot of flotsam for most users, but I completely appreciate that it would be good to be able to make it work as you want it to: your choice.
It is possible to right click the blank template and choose ‘Set Selected Template as Default’, but that doesn’t force it to open when starting Scrivener: it just makes it readily available for selection, one additional click away.
Edit: no longer at a Mac, but perhaps it is possible to locate the blank template in Finder and add it to the Dock as a shortcut. If it knew to open Scrivener as its parent application, that might do what you want.
Someone else might have a workaround.
There is no blank template. That selection in the New Project window has Scrivener create a new project from scratch on the disk in the desired location, entirely from programmed instructions. Templates on the other hand are freeze-dried projects that are unpacked and have a little setup done to them (substituting placeholders for author name, etc.). But, even if “Blank” was a template, it wouldn’t work to double-click on a .scrivtemplate file anyway. If it did, that would surely act as an “import template into software” request rather than to start the new project creation routine, I would think.
That aside, the complexity of implementing this idea would be a high barrier for something that, as Bridey puts, most people would have no need for. Keep in mind projects are typically used to clustering large quantities of material that share a common broadly defined topic—like a novel. Starting a new topic of that magnitude every time you fire up the software would be very unusual.
I did find a template within the Library of Scrivener and attempted to open it but Scrivener refused. Thank you for your replies, 2 clicks to open a new document it is.
No, 2 clicks to start a new project, which might be an 85k words novel.
Scrivener isn’ t Word or Notepad or some little thing to jot down a few words. Scrivener is for writing-projects. Who would want to start a new novel every time you open Scrivener? If Scrivener always opened with a new blank project you would have to click at least one click to close it all those times that you open Scrivener and don’t want to start a new novel.
Cat, have you gone through the tutorial that you find under the “Help” menu? If you haven’t, you really should. Reading your posts it seems to me that you’re confusing Scrivener with word processors like Word or Pages in which a template is a single new file.
A Scrivener project, which is what is opened from one of those templates is a package which can consist of thousands of separate files bound together by a hidden complex metadata structure. For Scrivener, “Documents” exist within a project, and within a project you can have “document” templates to create individual documents within that project with certain boilerplate elements or associated metadata, or a new blank document can be created with a single click.
HTH
Mark