Outliner Options settings can't be trusted to stick

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
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It doesn’t make much sense: One would expect that when a setting is invoked with a checkmark, that it will remain in effect for the life of that project, or until the person who paid good money for the license, changes that setting.

It doesn’t.

This keeps happening. For example, when I called up the Outliner, 5 things I had checked under ‘Outliner Options’ were missing. MIA. Why in the world would that be?

So I dutifully dug into the menu and the nested menu over and over (this should really be configured so one can make multiple settings without having to dig into two menus for each setting) to reset them. Then I immediately saved the project, hoping that would make these settings permanent.

It didn’t.

5 minutes later, having never left that single project and never paged away to a different app, I went to the Outliner again, and again, those settings were magically not there. No longer set. This makes zero logical sense. Why is this happening?

At the very least, is there a way to set a template of Outliner and Corkboard settings so if they disappear again, as they are doing over and over, I can invoke the template to get them the hell back without having to spend precious writing time futzing with menu settings over and over, which I have already set, multiple times? A template that won’t change other things?

It does not seem there is a logical reason or some interdependency with other features that would skunk this all the time as it does. This also seems like basic MacOS stuff, a common routine to set a menu choice, so it doesn’t seem coding for Scrivener could even eff up something this basic.

But it apparently has.

If anything fits the definition of a bug, this might be it. I would greatly appreciate if someone could look into this for us. I consider Scrivener one of the best-written applications ever, and I appreciate your dedication to making it better. Here is another chance to do that.

MacOS, Monterey v12.6, M1 MBP, rebooted yesterday.

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That’s certainly not a normal condition, and I can’t even think of what would change your outliner column configuration while the software is open.

But before going any further into troubleshooting, I would try this: hold down the Option key while looking at the File menu, and select the Close Project and Clear Interface Settings menu command.

Note: before doing that, you might want to read the rest of this post first, as I shared a tip about saving your window layout settings. This command obliterates everything view related about the project, where you label colours are used, etc. But obliterating everything is what we want, in case your UI config is messed up.

Well, that part you can already do well enough. The menu is there for completion, it not intended to be the sole mechanism for changing columns. The better tool is clicking the > button above the scrollbar and to the right of the column header row in the outliner. Note the standard convention of being able to right-click anywhere in the header row to change columns is also observed, though that menu is also single-use and thus more convenient for quick changes.

At the very least, is there a way to set a template of Outliner and Corkboard settings…

Yes. Use the Window ▸ Layouts ▸ Manage Layouts... menu command to get started with that. Get things set up correctly, click the + button, and then make sure the outliner and corkboard settings checkbox is ticked below the preview pane. Note that layouts save a lot more than just the outliner columns, it’s a very useful capability in general, not just a bug fixing tool. :slight_smile: You can read more about it in the user manual, §12.3, Saved Layouts.

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I just checked, and not unexpectedly, those five columns were again missing. They had been there all day, but then they disappeared.

But I think I got things to stick. What I had to do was a bit different, which was to update the main layout once I reconfigured things. I tried re-adding the columns and then clicking on the main layout, but that reverted to again not having those new columns there. Of course I had no idea that how I had manually configured things would be governed by a setting that could be changed in the menu, and would spontaneously revert to the main layout whenever it felt like it.

Aha! This told me those columns were never added to the main layout, and that the main layout is critical, and is likely where manual settings are stored. It also tells me something has been spontaneously invoking that incomplete main layout without me knowing about it, and that this main layout was in effect, which I would never have known since I’ve never dealt with multiple layouts before. But these are only educated guesses on my part.

So I re-added them again, and clicked the ‘use’ button, which apparently updated the main layout to include the new columns. That was really just a shot in the dark, but I think it might have worked.

Still not sure about this, as the entire process is completely unintuitive.

So I am going to take a wild guess what is going on here is that when I originally added those columns, that didn’t automatically change the main layout that I was apparently using without even knowing that I was.

One would assume that simply saving the status of a project would update any sort of main layout, or whatever layout one might be using, because that’s likely the way pretty much every other application in the world works—reconfigure settings, save what you have, and what you’ve changed should become permanent. But saving the project apparently does not do that in Scrivener.

I’ve never seen any reason to deal with layouts because I always want things the same, so I’m a bit uneducated in that aspect. I assumed any kind of custom layout was ancillary to however things were set up by the user, and a feature I didn’t need to avail myself of.

My best guess would be the main layout would be updated automatically if you add new columns, but maybe my best guess is incorrect, and maybe it’s important to update the main layout or whatever layout you’re using, manually, even if like me, you never had any idea there might be a layout in effect beyond how a user configures things manually.

Maybe there should be a pop-up dialogue asking if you want to update the current layout as a part of the process of changing these parameters. That would at least not leave people completely in the dark.

Thanks for the info about the pop-up menu for columns, which I was not aware of. That makes it easier to get the configuration back.

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I am not sure what you mean by “the main layout”, or what it means to repeatedly use it throughout the day, or to have to update it specifically. You mention later on that you’ve never used the Layouts feature or had a reason to, so I guess it’s not that you have a layout you’ve named “Main” that you switch back to? If that is what you mean though, just make sure your outliner and corkboard options are set the way you want on it, or leave that option off so that it doesn’t change your setup in that fashion (the default condition for new layouts).

At any rate, the way you are describing how the software works isn’t default or standard usage. There is no main layout that everyone has to deal with, and any changes made to the project window stick permanently until you change them yourself. You don’t even have to save, it just does this as you work.

If that is all you’re doing, and you aren’t using Layouts, then it might help to precisely describe what you are doing leading up to the columns disappearing, in terms of menu commands or buttons you click.

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If I invoke a new bundled template from scratch, which should, I would imagine, not have any configurations from me as the user, and then invoke ‘Manage Layouts’, the window that appears includes one layout named ‘MAIN’. It’s possible I saved this as a configured layout at some point, two different computers ago, since I am writing a trilogy and want three projects to behave in the same manner, but this was probably me trying to figure Scrivener out, way back before the earth’s crust cooled, and since I don’t use multiple layouts and never have, I’ve not visited this menu option nor have I made any changes to it in over 5 years.

So when I saw this after you suggested I go there, it seemed completely novel to me. I was not aware it may have been created by me years ago, bc I never once have gone there since. For all I knew, ‘MAIN’ was a part of the built-in app configuration.

But that is beside the point. Also in that window was a thumbnail image of a current project showing updates to The Binder that are recent. This implies that Scrivener updates, at a minimum, this thumbnail, which implies that it likely updates the layout as well when new changes are made to what is checked in the Outliner and Corkboard. Maybe it doesn’t but that sure is a strong implication, leading to an educated guess that it likely does.

So it either does or it doesn’t. Scrivener is too inscrutable for me to actually know. Maybe the answer is buried somewhere in that 1000-page manual that has ‘limited’ search capabilities, being in PDF format which has not had proper search capability for at least two decades and apparently has never been updated as a format by Adobe or whoever wrote the format back during the McKinley administration.

So this prompts a number of mysteries: If it does update on its own when changes are made, why did it not update when I added these 5 columns about a year ago? And why did this not become apparent to me until it kept reverting to this layout without me going there or futzing with this ‘custom’ layout, just a week ago, yet never did this before that? Why have I not seen this happen with any of the other incremental changes, and they are numerous, that I’ve made to the active layout (without invoking ‘manage layouts’) over the last 5 years? And why was it reverting to this layout spontaneously, which maybe is SOP, yet not visibly so until a change made by me happened not to stick for some unknown reason?

And, instead, if it doesn’t update on its own, why does a layout purportedly created by me and changed incrementally over time by me, yet not through invoking ‘manage layouts’, include these other earlier changes that I never manually added to this layout?

So whether it does or does not, or is supposed to or not supposed to incorporate changes, neither scenario implies that Scrivener was working normally for me. I understand that even the best software can have occasional glitches (which might be why you suggested the nuclear option), and I have to assume this is what happened, and I am not about to excoriate a really terrific historically-stable application because of some transitory hiccup. It’s just something that happened, it’s fixed, and it’s over. No problem.

There are really only two things that seem certain, which are that the recent changes were never saved anywhere, including inside this layout, and the application was reverting to that stale layout on its own, spontaneously.

That became a problem, I got a hint or two from you (thank you), and then, having the barest clue how things are actually supposed to work, I beat on it long enough to be able to fix it based on my own efforts. The end.

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Yes, you definitely created a Layout at some point in the past called “Main”, and since layouts travel with your other settings if you migrate properly, it would have gone from one computer to the next. What Scrivener does have is a “Default” layout, but that one (along with all of the other presets it ships with) deliberately does not touch view settings like outline columns. And those presets can all be switched off too. You may not be seeing them if you did.

But that is beside the point. Also in that window was a thumbnail image of a current project showing updates to The Binder that are recent. This implies that Scrivener updates, at a minimum, this thumbnail, which implies that it likely updates the layout as well when new changes are made to what is checked in the Outliner and Corkboard. Maybe it doesn’t but that sure is a strong implication, leading to an educated guess that it likely does.

To update the thumbnail you do have to click the Update button in that window. I have layout thumbnails that are years old at this point, from whatever project they came from.

There are really only two things that seem certain, which are that the recent changes were never saved anywhere, including inside this layout, and the application was reverting to that stale layout on its own, spontaneously.

Yeah that’s the part that is weird. It would never invoke a layout of its own accord, because in most cases that would be extremely disruptive. As noted in the section in the manual, almost everything about a window’s layout is saved, including its position on the screen, window size, the layout of panes, the widths of them and so on—and that goes even deeper into column setups and card sizes if you invoke the extra options.

So I can’t explain why this old layout, without your column settings, was periodically invoking and why that’s the only thing you noticed happening. Maybe your project window size, split layout orientation and such does not change much over the years so that is all you would see happening—but that still shouldn’t happen.

Since you don’t use it, it might be worthwhile to just delete the layout. You can always make it again from your current configuration if you really want to, and if there is some weird glitch we’ve never before encountered that causes it to be used over and over in an active session, at least that won’t happen since it isn’t there.

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Thank you.

Make no mistake, I don’t want to sound as if I’m whining. I’m quite proud of how well you guys have written this software and how motivated you are to help us in time of need.

I was looking for a bit of help, and I got it, and the problem is history. So my thanks to you. Your help to us is quite valuable.

I also thought that you might be curious about this mystery. Anything you can learn about how Scrivener performs in the field is potentially good info for you to have, since you are motivated to be good at what you do. Were I in your position, I would want to hear things from customers regarding their experiences, and I would guess you do as well.

We have to accept that software is infinitely complex, and there might be natural forces out there that can inadvertently get it to misbehave on rare occasion. That’s just the way of the world. Scrivener has a remarkable track record of stability, and I still consider it a terrific choice for any creative out there. I could never have written my novels this well without it.

So I am quite appreciative that this story has a happy ending.

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