Hi,
I have searched, but am unable to find an answer to a very simple issue — I just want to open a document as a standalone window. I’ve tried double-clicking on the document in the binder, but doing so simply highlights the title of the document for editing. Is there a way of opening a document as a standalone window?
Thanks in advance.
In the “normal” way (like other applications, such as Word, do) I don’t believe it is possible. But there are a couple of alternative to achieve a similar effect. The first is full screen view - wonderful for distraction free writing. The other is Quickref (the icon is in the toolbar) - this does open a document in it’s own window. Although it is primarily for referencing the document (hence the name I presume) you can rezise the window to suit and you can still edit the document as you please.
Selecting the document in the Binder and hitting the space bar will also open it in a Quick Reference window.
Thank you, both. The “Quick Reference” function goes some way to solving the riddle, although I am unable to use my keyboard shortcut command-tilde to flick between open windows, as I can in other software — the quick reference window just stays on top. It would be great to be able to open one or more documents in windows independently of the main binder window. Hmmm. 
Cmd-` will work to move the focus from the QR window to the main window, and Ctrl-F6 will jump to the QR window (and between QR windows if you have multiple). You can change the shortcut for that in Keyboard Shortcuts under “Keyboard and Text Input” (at least in Snow Leopard; it may not be separated out in earlier versions).
The QR windows still stay on top of the main window, though, so you’ll need to position them out of your way. Then you can cycle through and bring them up on top of each other, if you want, so they can all be in roughly the same place.
Thanks, MimeticMouton, I understand your advice, but was hoping I might be able to find a solution without the QR window always staying on top. This behaviour is not productive for me.
It seems as though it is not possible to have one or more documents opened independently of the main binder, and be able to flick through them independently as well.
Thanks for your help.
I don’t know what you’re after exactly,* but have you thought about just loading up the main Editor with the different documents you want, then using the document history commands cmd-] and cmd-[ to flip through them?
But I meant as far as how you use them or what you’re envisioning as the working method, why you want it that way, so I don’t know if this would be helpful to achieve the goal or not.Thanks — the cmd-] and cmd-[ commands are useful to know.
A familiar example of what I am after can be found when using Word (and many other programs) where one can have any number of documents open and flick through them using cmd-` . I am very used to this behaviour and find it to be a productive method for moving between a large number of open docs when editing and writing various things.
The methods you’ve very kindly described limit the behaviour to having a permanently floating window or only moving between two documents. As I learn that this is the way Scrivener functions it might just be a matter of changing my habits!
True for the QR window; not true for the document history. You can load as many documents as you want in the Editor and then use the keyboard shortcuts to run through them. Basically whenever you open a document, it–and its view mode–is added to the Editor’s history. Each split has its own history, and the histories are brought into Full Screen as well. So while the history is just automatically created while you’re working, you can deliberately load a bunch of documents into the Editor to make them available for you to then toggle through, the same as you would opening multiple windows in Word.
So yes–different than what you’re used to, and it may take some playing around and getting comfortable. Hopefully though as you try some different things you’ll settle into a new pattern of increased productivity! That’s certainly the goal. 
Ah! Yes!
At first I didn’t quite follow your advice about the Editor window, but can now see that it quite closely emulates what I am used to. I can certainly adapt to that.
Thanks!
Correction to what I said above–an editor’s document history doesn’t get automatically carried into full screen mode, but you can select multiple documents in the binder and then jump to full screen when the corkboard or outliner is visible and all the documents selected will then be accessible in the history while in full screen. (Can’t do this from Scrivenings since the entire Scrivenings session will just move into FS as-is).