I’m trying to do all of my authoring in Scrivener. These days, much of what I produce includes essays, op-eds and blog posts, all of which are saturated with HTML links.
Every authoring program I have used in the past for authoring (every single one), if it supports embedded HTML links, it supports copying those link addresses to the clipboard for export to other software — always with a right-click Copy Link command.
Scrivener seems unique in not having this capability.
(It actually has the capability, but not easily. To copy a link address, one must:
Highlight text that includes the link
Select “Edit > Add Link”
Highlight the displayed link address
Then click “Copy”
To get a pastable link address, the right-click “Copy” command won’t work, unless the only pasting is into Scrivener. Pasting a link copied in this way into another program pastes only the displayed text.)
If a short op-ed has 20 links that need pasting into target software or email, that’s quite a lot of steps for each one. For a regular op-ed or essay writer who’s trying to single source all of his writing in Scrivener, the task is beyond doable.
A right-click “Copy Link” command seems an important missing function and a highly desirable addition.
FrameMaker, OneNote, Word and its variants. Various blogging input editors like Blogger, WordPress, Substack, Wix. In ancient times, WordPerfect and Multimate, etc. Various text editors and Markdown apps, which don’t transport links well at all.
And probably a few I’ve forgotten. Bottom line, programs that support HTML links, unless they’re flavors of Markdown, also support easy coping of link addresses. Scrivener is the exception.
This fails to mention all of the Linux editors most have never heard of, like WriteMonkey, Plume Creator, Scribus, Writer’s Café (one of the attempted Scrivener work-alikes), Gingko, etc. Just saying.
There’s a lot of product out there for writers of online material, among which Scrivener shines (except in this respect).
I’d like to add that it works with a text that has an underlying link too. Copy Link copies the link while Copy copies the visible text.
It’s just the Add Link command that’s not part of the context menu but only of the Edit menu. Comes with a convenient keyboard shortcut out of the box on the other hand.
The Copy Link option isn’t currently in the context menu on Windows, but it is on the list to be added.
In the meanwhile, I’m wondering if running off a quick compile to access the links might be faster than going through the current steps if you’re needing to do this regularly for a number of links. What ultimately are you wanting to get out of it—a list of all the links in the document? Do they need to be associated with their original anchor text? You might be able to just run it through a compile format that includes some post-processing to pull the links out and print them into a text file for you, but I’m not sure if that would meet the specific need here.
I want to author an essay in Scrivener that has formatting and embedded links, then copy whole thing and paste it a) into the editor of a blogging platform (currently using Wix and Substack) — or b) into an email message for submission to online or print journal editors — and have the formatting and linkage preserved.
What kind of “quick compile” did you have in mind? I’m open to anything that works.
It looks like Wix allows for entering in Markdown; would using Edit ▸ Copy Special ▸ Copy as Markdown work for you? That would preserve the links and formatting like bold and italic; I’m not sure how much else would be copying anyway into a blog editor, but I’m not familiar with the specifics of this one. But it may be a faster way of getting the text with a majority of the formatting copied over, and then perhaps you could switch into the regular “rich text” formatting view for the blog post to apply any other formatting?
I was actually about to post about exporting to Substack, I am doing the same thing, authoring in Scrivener, but then I would love to be able to just export it from Scrivener directly to Locals, Substack etc.
I don’t know what the underlying platform for Substack is, but WordPress accepts Word documents. So Scrivener → Word → WordPress usually works pretty well.
Being curious about this, writing in Scrivener with Styles, then export to Word DOCX format (which has Word Styles), then in Word Select All, Copy, then Paste into the Substack editor window for the post. Far as I can tell, Substack will use and assign Word’s styles to the content pasted in. And, far as I can tell, there is no way to “upload” a file.
much appreciated … would be great if we could do it direct, but a workaround will do for now
