(This is probably answered somewhere. Sorry.)
I’m interested in a workflow that moves back and forth from Scrivener to MSWord, like the one outlined here: jamierubin.net/2012/10/26/s … l-process/
However, I’m running into problems when I attempt to cut and paste from Word to Scrivener. On a former project, the paste function did not work at all. My current problem is that the formatting required by the publisher does not paste back into Scrivener. Of particular distress is the loss of the font for the Chinese script I am using.
I also run into trouble when I try to import the Word file into Scrivener. The formatting gets lost that way too.
Is there only a one-way street from Scrivener to Word? Is there a work-around?
The font etc in the Editor in Scrivener can be whatever you want. There is no reason to keep what you had in Word because you can change to anything you like when you compile.
Why would you want to keep the settings you have in Word?
Thanks for the replies:
I’m using MSWord for Mac version 16.16.24
I need the formatting from MSWord to meet the needs of the editor/publisher. She wants the Chinese characters in PMingLiu, which, by the way, is not loaded in Scrivener.
So an additional question would be: how do I import this font?
In Scrivener, please look at the Scrivener -> Preferences -> Sharing -> Conversions pane. You’ll see an option to “use enhanced converters,” which is probably checked by default. If you uncheck it, do you get better results?
Scrivener’s native format is RTF. If you copy and paste, Scrivener will put RTF on the clipboard, and you’ll be relying on Word’s converter to deal with it. If you Compile to Word format, Scrivener will do the conversion instead. Since Microsoft created the RTF format in the first place, they usually handle it pretty well, but it’s worth experimenting with both approaches to see what gives better results.
For various reasons, there is always some formatting that has to be done after compile. In this case, all the Chinese characters need to be converted to PMingLIU, and because there are a lot of isolated instances of these characters, it is time consuming. (The font is available in MSWord for Mac, when I open Font Book, it is not available.)
I’d like to keep the whole writing process in Scrivener, including revision requests from the editor. This way, I can take advantage of the snapshots and comparison features. So, at some point, I will need to return to Scrivener, but then I lose any formatting I had done in Word. This seems unavoidable.
You’re right, the draft does not need to look the same in Scrivener as it does in Word. (Although, it would be nice.) The plan is to copy the editor’s comments into Scrivener, but not my text. After revisions, I will not compile but cut and paste any revised text back into Word and format from there. This way, I will only have to re-format the revised parts.
It isn’t there because you haven’t installed it. As in so many things, M$ Word goes its own way and does its own thing, and pays no attention to Apple. So if you want to use the font everywhere else, you just download it and open it with Font Book. It will take seconds.
I installed all the usual M$ fonts, like Calibri, by downloading them from their site and installing them with Font Book so I can use them in non M$ programs.
Without going into unnecessary details, I use Nisus Writer Pro and not Word. I did have to use Word for one article I was asked to edit; I had to turn off change tracking because that caused Word to crash very frequently. To me NWP has the advantages:
NWP uses RTF as its default format. It is a brilliant and highly modified version of the same text engine that Scrivener uses, so it works extremely well with documents compiled as RTF by Scrivener. I have my compile dialog set to automatically open in NWP.
NWP has a terrific macro language. Scrivener cannot mark stretches of text as being in particular languages, but NWP can, and one of the great advantages with Chinese is that it uses particular ranges of UTF. So I have a macro—thanks to the ever helpful Martin at Nisus!—which rapidly goes through my Scrivener output and quickly marks all Chinese as that, The macro also imports a style-sheet and sets fonts including Chinese according to the style-sheet.
NWP can export to DOCX, but as I don’t use Word, I don’t know if there are any quirks with it … anyone I work with is happy to receive the RTF document which opens unproblematically in Word.
I don’t know if Word has a Macro language—it ought to—so, if it does, you should be able to create a macro to do the same thing. I’d be willing to dig out the UTF code ranges to send to you if it would help.
Basically, I use Songti SC as my Chinese font; I don’t know PMingLIU.
