I am new to Scapple. I like it, but it has one rather puzzling feature. I’ve discovered how to create and work on multiple new documents, by adding tabs from the tab overview. However, each such document then gets saved into a different .scap file, and I cannot find a way of re-opening all of them into separate tabs. If I try to open multiple files, each one opens into a separate window, rather than into a separate tab within the same window.
How can I get my documents back into separate tabs in the same window?
I don’t ever use this feature of the Mac, so I’m not an expert at the various ways in which one can use it, but I think what you want requires a combination of:
Disable Close windows when quitting an app in the System Preferences: General tab. As noted in the fine print here, if you turn that on then the Mac won’t restore windows when launching the program the next time, so you kind of need that in order to have a concept of stuff loading into tabs.
Close Scapple using ⌘Q at all times, with all of your stuff open, rather than closing windows manually with the red button in the top left corner.
Like I say, maybe there are other ways, but in short it would work just like any other Mac program that lets you put windows into tabs.
By the way, if you like this way of working, be sure not to upgrade past macOS 10.15 for a while. Apple broke tabs for this type of window back with macOS 11, and it hasn’t worked since.
Does this imply that, having quit the app and closed all windows when I first created these multiple .scap files, I can never get Scapple itself to reload them into multiple tabs? I would have expected that feature to be part of Scapple, rather than reliant on how Mac OS is enabled. After all, it created them as separate files in different tabs within the same window. Why let me do that, if it won’t then give me a way of reloading them into different tabs in the same window?
Does this imply that, having quit the app and closed all windows when I first created these multiple .scap files, I can never get Scapple itself to reload them into multiple tabs?
What will be loaded the next time you launch the software is dependent upon what you left open the last time you quit. If it only did that once, the first time you used the software, and never adjusted to how you work after that point for all time, then the setting would be quite useless, no? Maybe I don’t understand the question.
Oh, maybe what I’m missing is that you aren’t familiar with how to tab windows together after you close them individually? Try this tip, in that case.
I would have expected that feature to be part of Scapple, rather than reliant on how Mac OS is enabled
Thank you for that pointer. Despite having used Mac OS for more than 12 years, I had never noticed that Merge Windows option and didn’t know you could do that.
I came to Scapple after using Scrivener for some years, so I’m more familiar with an application which excels at managing multiple documents within a single application window, and allows external files to be imported into a document set at will. That was the origin of my expectation, especially since both products are sold by the same company.
The difference I think is that in Scrivener it’s a different system entirely from a regular document editor, like TextEdit. So we have some of our own settings that mimic the settings the system itself has available—one of which, that is enabled by default, reopens projects after you quit. So it will work that way, and restore tabs if you use them, even if your global system default is to close documents when quitting.
