I’m seeking to find a way to work between Mindmanager, Scrivener and Word on Windows. So far the Mindmanager<->Word part works great, because both of them can work with docx files and maintain the desired structure/hierarchies.
If only I could get Scrivener to be part of this picture! Unfortunately, when I bring a structured .docx file into Scrivener it just appears as a single document, rather than a hierarchy of documents as I’d hoped. Similarly, when I compile from Scrivener to .rtf or .docx, the resulting file opened in Word has no structure/outline.
Am I doing something wrong? Is there a file format that will allow movement of a project between Scrivener and Word (or Scrivener and Mindmanager) while properly retaining all the structural information? I gather things are a bit easier if you use a Mac and use OPML to get around…
Will greatly appreciate any assistance anybody can offer.
Aanon
ps. For the curious, I’d hoped for a workflow like this:
accommodate major projects inside Scrivener, taking advantage of the amazing flexibility of Scrivener to contain and structure all of my research, reading notes and so on alongside the manuscript
once I have a collection of ideas from reading and reflection that I’d like to accommodate somewhere in the manuscript, I’d take these over to Mindmanager and begin to structure them in a visual form (mindmap)
then I’d save the mindmap as, say, a docx(?) file and import it into the manuscript section of my scrivener project, where it would become the structure of the manuscript
then do the writing, compile and take into Word for final formatting
So far, no complete solution to report. I can get only this far:
Step 1: Compile Scrivener->Word [then, in Word, use find and replace to structure the doc into headings, sub-headings etc. Could be done automatically by macro.]
Step 2: Word->Mindmanager [works exactly as hoped: document hierarchies reflected in mindmap]
Step 3: Alter mindmap structure as desired, then export to docx [works exactly as hoped]
Step 4: Bring updated file back into Scrivener [at this point, all hierarchical info is lost as the docx file becomes a flat text file ]
I thought there might be some joy in using Multimarkdown or OPML as a go-between, but a simple export-import test reveals that these formats also end up ‘flat’ once they are re-imported to scrivener.
A question for the experts, then: is there any format that, upon import to Scrivener, retains its hierarchical structures?
There’s no need to use Word as an intermediary. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but I had no problems exporting a text file of my Scrivener structure and importing that directly into my mind mapping software (NovaMind on the Mac or, with even better results, iThoughts on iOS). From memory, I think I simply compiled my outline (titles only), but I’m not sure - I think I posted about it here around the middle of last year. Since I did this, Keith has added the ability to export in OPML format, making direct transfer to mind maps even easier. Out of curiosity, I just tested exporting an OPML outline of a Scrivener file to DropBox, importing and editing it in iThoughts, and then saving an OPML file back to DropBox and importing that into a new a Scrivener file. Worked perfectly, definitely not a “flat” structure when reimported.
For what it’s worth, part of what I love about iThoughts is it can export into a wide range of formats including html, OPML, markdown, MyThoughts, MindManager, Novamind (both 4 & 5), Xmind, iMindmap (4 & 5), Mindview, Conceptdraw, MindGenious and CSV).
My procrastination time for today has now expired…
There isn’t currently a structural import. The MMD->OPML is currently the best structural out (and you can use that even if you aren’t using MMD since that just works with headers and plain-text notes attributes anyway), but until we have OPML or MMD in, you need to split things up by hand. The formatting find tool combined with split can make quick work of this if you prepare appropriately, but as you might have seen, the software isn’t really designed for intensive round-trip loops yet. That will get a bit better as time goes by and more of these nice little side things can be implemented.
Perhaps officially there isn’t, but for practical purposes there is. I say it because I tested it today & it worked perfectly. I was surprised that it worked because I didn’t think there was. In the past, I’ve only gone Scrivener to Mind Map, I only tried the round trip because I was curious.
Workflow:
Compile to OPML
Import OPML into mind map software (I used iThoughts)
Edit
Export from mind map software back to OPML
In Scrivener, use File → Import → Files… to import the OPML file
Enjoy the structured import
Note I only did this with the structure, titles and notes. Not sure if would work with the content of individual files.
Oops, I thought the original question was regarding Windows as that is how the platform tags read. I don’t think Windows can import OPML files as outlines yet. Maybe I’m missing something though.
The original poster works in a Windows environment and MindManager/Win doesn’t offer any OPML export (this is at least so in release 9 and I doubt they changed it - shame on them!).
I navigate the boards by using View active topics (rather than individual threads). I usually avoid the Windows forums specifically to avoid putting my foot in it. Somehow I completely missed that this was posted under Technical Support (Windows).
Yep, and somehow I still managed to earn a doctorate.
On the plus side, if some Mac user wanting to to do round trip exporting to mind maps just happens to be browsing the Windows help forums, then my comments might still be of some use… (sheesh).
Having said all that, when I initially experimented with exporting to mind maps, Scrivener (Mac) couldn’t export to OPML either. I compiled my outline to plain to plain text and imported that in my mind map software. I initially used NovaMind (available for Mac & Windows) but found that iThoughts (an iOS app costing less than $10) did a much better job. iThoughts will save maps as native MindManager files so is still relevant (assuming, of course, that you have access to an iOS device).
Getting the outline back into Scrivener could be a little trickier, and I suspect that using Word as an intermediary here would be useful.
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