Is there a way to format a footnote if I cut and paste into it? If I paste from a source that’s justified (even if I choose “paste and match style”) it comes in justified. Since the footnote column width is narrow, long words get stretched out and the spacing is weird and hard to read.
But I can’t seem to find a way to change the justification to left justified—the paragraph options are greyed out for footnotes. Any other workarounds here?
If you want it to look a specific way:
But the formatting will change at compile. That should work, but only as a visual in the inspector.
If you just want to reset it to look “normal” :
You can simply set your footnote to be of the “no style” style after pasting in some text that has its own formatting. (That’ll reset the footnote to what it should be. – It will say it is already “no style” in the format bar, but make it “no style” again.)
Otherwise, the formatting at compile is set in the compile format.
It should end up formatted as the body text, to the exception of :
Meaning that you can simply ignore it, if you are strictly worried for the esthetic of the final output.
Thanks. Unfortunately, copying or pasting formatting didn’t work for me. Plus I have tons of footnotes already formatted with a justification that I just want to select and align left instead. (I’m on OSX for what it’s worth.)
Yes, I know it reformats during compiling. I’m just looking to improve the readability of my current manuscript while I work.
[EDIT] A much better solution was proposed further down. Skip this and see @xiamenese post below.
Font is now the same :
Of course, the issue is that if your default formatting has an indent (like it was the case in my demo screenshot), you won’t be able to remove an indent by applying the “no style” style to a footnote.
All of what I just did above can be then replaced by a single operation:
Create a style with the right font and no indent, and apply that style to the problematic footnotes. It’ll be overridden at compile, but as far as the inspector goes, that should technically take care of your problem.
P.S. Since your question was about removing an indent I went forward, but note that I was unable to get an indent in there by pasting text. I had to put the indent in afterwards. (I have no idea how you actually end up with the undesired indent in your footnotes…)
Hello, fellow Mac-user here. I made the default editor on my test project fully justified and entered two new footnotes; they were left-justified as normal.
I then copied a fully justified paragraph and pasted it into a new footnote; that footnote was fully justified.
But for me the solution to that is straightforward.
Make sure none of your footnotes have the focus.
Single click on one, then use Cmd-A which will select them all.
Right click on one and choose “Convert to default formatting” from the dropdown.
Note, my default formatting in Preferences/Settings is for left-justified; my test project uses separate settings so I can play with them without upsetting my real projects. If your Preferences default formatting is set to fully justified, it may be that your footnotes/comments are inheriting their justification from that.
At this point, let me say that setting your default to left-justified might solve that problem. You can set the compile output to fully justified in the end. It’s a fundamental part of Scrivener’s design that you can create your text in an editor which is comfortable to work with while knowing that at compile it can be easily set to produce standard output.
HTH 
Mark
Interesting. The Windows version has this too.
I didn’t know about it. So thanks @xiamenese 
Thank you! This solved it perfectly. I was right-clicking within the footnote itself, with no luck. I didn’t realize a different menu appears if I right click over the top bar instead of over the footnote text.
Right-clicking on the footnote’s top bar shows “Convert to default formatting.”
My pleasure, folks!
Mark
