Yes, the problem is totally with Word, or on the intersection of Scrivener and Word. But so far nobody can tell me what it is and where, other than telling me to change the normal template, which I’ve done before.
Re: the second point – thank you for the reference but it’s not actually applicable here as copy-pasting anything to Scrivener scenes changes the formatting. My problem is with compiling to Word and the odd paragraph spacing that wasn’t there before.
I, and without checking thread above are others, am not suggesting anything about the Normal Template.
Determine what style is assigned to the text in the new DOCX file you created from the RTF. It is probably the “Normal” style. Then change the paragraph settings to what you want in the Normal Style. All paragraphs styled with Normal style will change automatically.
It is, in Word, possible to put override formatting on top of the Normal style. This formatting will not necessarily change as the Normal style changes. (For good and valid reasons. You wouldn’t want changing from Arial to Times New Roman to unbold all your bolded text.)
But we are well into Word support questions here.
probably worth closing the thread.
My mistake. There was talk about template earlier, so I assumed that’s what you meant. Again, my mistake.
My style is Normal. If I change the paragraph settings and redefine “Normal” everything does change to the new style – but that means chapter titles are no longer centered, all lines are double spaced, fonts are changed, etc. Not what I’d want, at all.
ETA: this is exactly what kewms just said.
Yes, it’s a Word issue but it happens only when I compile from Scrivner. Closing the thread leaves me without a solution.
Have you opened the Interactive Tutorial from the Help menu and tried to compile that? If not, try it and see if you get the same unfavourable experience when the document lands in Word. If not, it would point to something being amiss in your WIP—even a font that doesn’t communicate well between Scrivener and Word.
The tutorial has very different paragraph spacing so it’s hard to tell if compiling changed anything. I know the project is fine, though, because I compiled it a month ago and it was fine.
Take one document in the Interactive Tutorial and change the formatting to that of your WIP and compile it. You can always use Help > Regenerate to reset the Interactive Tutorial if you need it in its old format afterwards.
The tutorial is in a different format (not fiction) so the default export is different. Still, I took a page and moved it to novel format and compiled and it has the same issue.
I know there’s no problem with my document since I compiled it a month ago without a problem. I have also tried some old projects that have previously compiled fine, and now they all have the same problem. I haven’t changed any of the settings in my documents. The only thing that changed was a Word update.
You are welcome to send us a sample project demonstrating the error, which will help us to improve our DOCX converter in the future. Beyond that, finding out what changed on the Word side of things would be a question for Microsoft support.
For the solution to your immediate problem, the best available workaround is going to be to compile to RTF and allow Word to do the conversion.
Since we are out of the realm of Scrivener support, I’m going to close this thread.