does someone know what’s going on with my project?
whenever i close my project and reopen it, scrivener automatically adds some sort of numbering at the beginning of my documents. when i delete those lines, save the project, close it and reopen it, the numbering is there again. this drives me nuts. please see the screenshot!
at first, there even appeared “KeepWithNext”-commands along the numbering (or something like that) but lately these don’t appear anymore. also, it only happens to documents in the project i have edited in the last few days, while it doesn’t happen to documents that i haven’t made any changes to in the last few days. to my knowledge, i haven’t changed any settings at all, the only thing i did, was to compile documents for PDF export, but even then i didn’t mess around much. it does seem like some sort of auto-numbering though. whatever the case, i can’t seem to figure it out, not even in the compile menu. i don’t think it’s a bug; any ideas?
thank you for any kind of input that could help me solve that issue.
thank you for your reply!
i do not synchronize anything, and i have not granted any other software access, at least not lately.
here’s what “show invisibles” reveals:
it doesn’t reveal anything special, i’m afraid (see above).
it’s interesting that the same numbering is not always inserted - for comparison, please also see the initial screenshot in the first post. I really can’t explain this.
one time there are several numberings, then it’s just a “1”, then again just a “.”, then a “1.” …
it really only happens in this project and in certain scrivenings, everything else is unaffected.
did a few more tests just now: if i duplicate a scrivening, it happens too. if i create a completely new scrivening, again, it’s happening. old scrivenings still are unaffected, as long as i don’t make changes to them. this is so weird.
another test: i did make a backup copy of that project, opened it up and put the settings back to default. to my surprise, scrivener’s behavior is still the same. so it cannot be the project settings, which seems even weirder to me.
creating a completely new project and just dragging the chapters over from the old project does result in the same behavior.
and if i start editing any of the other chapters in whatever project, this happens (“TEST HEADER” and annotation done by myself):
Did you paste text from another source, like a word processor or from web content? That’s known to introduce unwanted and unseen “junk”. To avoid it you should Paste and Match Style instead.
Since you’re on Mac, there’s a Zap Gremlins feature somewhere, click Help → Search Menus and then Zap Gremlins for the search criteria to find it.
Also, the purple arrows are synonymous with tabbing, which is not a recommended way of working with Scrivener if you’re writing a novel. It has its place, but not in creating lines and indenting narrative.
Copy the content of a deviant page: Select All and Copy. (EDIT: Select all text manually. The Select All command would include the junk.)
Open a new Project (test project).
Paste and Match Style into a blank document in the test project.
Save the test project by closing.
Restart the test project to see if anything changed.
however, it still doesn’t make sense to me. why are only those scrivenings/documents affected, that i edit, while all the other parts of the project aren’t affected? if there’s something wrong with the formatting, it should occur, no matter if i edit it now or if i edited it days ago …
also i still don’t know if that’s a practical solution, i have a 700 page document and losing all the formatting would be a nightmare. guess i’ll have to live with the weird auto-insertions, at least if there’s not really an explanation for it.
So, if you’re working on the document containing page 1 today and tomorrow you last worked on a document that’s hypothetically page 35 (no way of really telling off hand in Scrivener), then if page 35 was the last document you worked on and reopen this behaviour is introduced to that document. Am I correct? If not, then the problem only at the very beginning and you’d need to create a new first page and pull it into your live project and get rid of the “corrupted page”.
Do you work with document templates? You may have a corrupted template that needs replacing.
Also try Copy Formatting from an uncorrupted page and Past Formatting to the whole of the corrupted page, including the area featuring the junk. Any specialist changes to formatting or styles would then be confined to you fixing one page only.
as far as i understand, you’re absolutely correct.
there never was a problem with any of the documents at all, but since about 4 days ago, suddenly every document in the project shows the same behavior, as soon as i edit it, which does not make sense, because if i really f*cked up the formatting in a document, it should only appear in 1 document. but it occurs everywhere, doesn’t matter if it’s the first document, the 20th document, the last document, or even a completely unrelated folder of documents in the same project. it occurs in whatever document i edit within that project. that’s why potentially every file in that project is corrupted somehow and copying the formatting results in the same behavior and weird auto-insertions as before. honestly, that scares me, because i do not work with templates and i do not paste text from anywhere. also, i did not mess around with settings or formatting at all. it occured overnight.
the only thing that seems to work is to wipe the project clean of all the formatting.
I can’t speak for you, because I don’t know if you apply special formatting to certain documents.
I have a very simplistic setup that’s a standard font and line spacing which I prefer. If I were on Mac, it would be set in Settings → Editing → Formatting. So, theoretically, if something went wrong with my project I’d start a new project, set the default formatting as mentioned, select the “text” content of the old project and move it to a new project and Paste and Match Style.
If your project is not intense with varying fonts and styles, you could so the same things. Yes, you 700 pages are probably around 200 documents, but your challenge would be significantly reduced.
If you use metadata and the like, you’d have an added headache sorting that out.
I’ve not seen your type of bug reported.
You might wish to open a support ticket with L&L for them to take a peep, though there is a strong likelihood that the problem might only exist on your computer.
thank you so much, i really appreciate you taking the time!
that said, i do believe that this is something the devs should look into, because a writing app should never start inserting text by itself randomly without any apparent reason over and over again, no matter how often you delete it, especially if you’re a basic user that keeps the app as much to default as possible. cryptic parameters like “$ScrKeepWithNext” and that stuff should not appear out of nowhere at the beginning of your documents. maybe i’m wrong and there’s a good reason, but i have not experienced behavior like that in 30 years of text processing in any software and that tells me that someone should take a closer look at it.
don’t get me wrong, scrivener’s fantastic, but things like that can turn into dealbreakers for people. again, could be my fault, in that case i’m sorry.
You’re correct, this shouldn’t happen. If you’d like for us to take a closer look, please send a project demonstrating the issue to our support address: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/contact-us
You can email a project by using the File → Backup → Backup To command, and checking the box to create a ZIP backup.
Without looking at it, it’s hard to say, but my best guess is that the documents are being created from a template that includes the problem formatting.
The numbering at the beginning is probably coming from a list. To get rid of it, select the affected lines and use the Format → Lists → None command.
just in case anyone experiences the same problem:
as i said, i never had worked with a template or anything alike, so that wasn’t the problem. the problem was, for whatever reason, scrivener overnight seems to have switched every manual heading i had done in the project (about 100 documents) into a list – so you totally got it right. i don’t know why such a thing would ever happen, my guess is that it has to do with me trying to compile my loose documents into a coherent document, inserting automatic page breaks in the compile menu and stuff like that. that somehow must’ve changed the attributes of all the headings!? it’s the best explanation i have, because it was the only thing i messed around with before that behavior occured.
so, because the attribute of the first line of all the documents was set to a list, no matter how often i deleted that numbering at the beginning, scrivener always recreated that numbering when being loaded, because the first line was still set to a list.
long story short: setting every manual heading i had done back from a list to no list fixed my issues. not sure what’s up with the $ScrKeepWithNext-Line, which is inserted from time to time, but i guess it does have to do with it …
thank you again, you made me a happy customer and saved me from desparation!
please see the screenshot!
