Hi,
I am working on a project where each project document has a date time stamp (different from the scrivener created/modified date time stamp). Think blog style posts where each post is its own document.
I want to order these documents by their respective date time stamp. Currently, the date time stamp is simply a line of text in the document.
Is there native scrivener functionality that could support this?
Thanks for any help!
The only sort function in Scrivener is based on title, so if you wanted to sort by publication date, you would need to provide a sort-friendly date stamp method in the title. Probably the best way of doing this, so as to not disrupt the existing titles, would be to put all of the material for each blog article into a date stamped folder. Then put all of these folders into a room together and sort them by name.
Thank you for the reply, Amber.
If I understand you correctly, my doc structure would look something like this:
Draft
2010.8.17
A nifty title
2010.8.19
Another nifty title
2010.8.19.4.46PM
Yet another nifty title
Do you have any suggestions for a sort friendly date time stamp format?
Thanks again!
Yes, once I clicked “Quote reply” and saw your indenting, I agree with your interpretation. Of course you could put the date in the title of the article—but if you are using the title in compile, then that probably isn’t a good option. Using this method lets you break the article up a bit if you want, too, since the folder neatly contains everything related to the article.
For good sortable dates, the main rule of thumb is to pick an ascending or descending order, as it looks like you already have, and to “zero-pad” your days and months. So instead of 2010-3-9, 2010-03-09. Punctuation is ignored, so as long as it is consistent you can pick that part freely, or even use none at all.
Another thing you could do is wait for 2.0 to do this re-organisation. With custom-meta data you could add a text date to each article and then sort by that in outliner. You can “commit” a soft-soft in the outliner by selecting the items and dragging them back to the Binder.
That probably wouldn’t be any less work than folders, but it would leave your binder less cluttered up.
Great, thanks.
I’ll wait for the 2.0 release. The less clutter the better!
From forum posts, it seems like the release might come in October?
Yes, late October is the current goal. We’d really like to get it out before NanoWriMo, so those toiling folk can have it for their projects.
Awesome. I’ll cross my fingers for October.
And I’m glad you mentioned NaNoWriMo. I’d never heard of it. I just signed up!
It’s great fun, I’ve done it for years; “won” twice. I definitely recommend hooking up with the local groups. Half of the fun is having a hoard of unkempt writers descending upon random coffeehouses for six hours at a stretch while bemused onlookers wonder what is going on.
Hi Amber,
Just wanted to let you know I got the nanowrimo 2.0 release. Awesome stuff!! And the custom meta data tagging is perfect for my needs. I noticed in the tutorial there was even a mention of adding dates as custom meta data with a recommendation for format. Very nice.
Also, I’ve been recommending Scrivener to many of my writer friends. It’s an amazing tool. I pitch it as the greatest writing productivity software I’ve found since Microsoft Word.
-John
Thanks, John! Glad you are liking the new release. 