I’ve been writing my dissertation in Scrivener and it’s come time to export to MS Word for the finalizing of Chapter 3. However, there’s a problem. The “quote-indent” style that I created and used in scrivener for setting-off long quotes doesn’t’ convert well into MSWord. The margins extend beyond the page-margins of MSWord. (See Screen Shot). I have lots of these quote-indents in my work and I don’t want to have to go back and change each instance of them. Two questions:
is there an easy way to change an existing so it changes all existing instances of text that use that style? I.e. could I make some change to the ‘master style template’ somehow and have those extend to the all instances of that style?
In the future, how do I set styles so they will compatible with MSWord margins?
I’m afraid the only way to fix it will be to change the style and then go through each instance of the text where it appears in Scrivener and apply your new style. How did you create this style? Using the Apple styles sheet, or did you use the scriptwriting features to do this? That will help me answer your second question.
I did NOT use the apple style sheets-- in fact, I’m not ever sure what those are (?). Are they useful?
No, I just adjusted the features of the text using the ruler and font-size and then saved it as a ‘favorite. ’ Are there some ‘stock ’ styles for this sort of thing in the future? It would be ideal if there were some styles that work off the standard US academic margins of 1 ‘’ on all sides (of an 8.5’’ by 11’’ paper), most important would be a standard quote-indent style (for extended quotes) which is an additional 1’’ indent on each side (= 2’’ off total) for long, extended quotes.
I haven’t written the ENTIRE dissertation yet, so I’d love to sort all this out now.
…One other question: Is there a way to Edit my styles, i.e. delete certain styles, modify others? As it stands now,it seems I can only add new styles from existing text, but not change or delete existing styles.
You actually have used Apple’s ruler style system, which is used by most Mac apps that edit rich text. The problem with Apple’s “styles” is that they aren’t actually styles in the sense that applications like Microsoft Word use – unlike Word, there’s no easy way to retrospectively edit, en masse, the look of the styled text that you’ve already applied. Apple’s ruler doesn’t really remember the actual style name once it’s been applied – select a bit of text that you’ve styled via the ruler, and you’ll notice that the style name in the ruler never appears. Basically, once you’ve applied a style to some text, it simply has those attributes, but no real identity. I’ll come back to this later.
You can indeed edit and delete these ruler styles before they’re applied, but it’s very awkward. Choose “Other…” from the Styles dropdown in the ruler, select “Favourite Styles”, and a dropdown containing all your favourites should appear. Do delete one, first select it from the dropdown, then hit “Remove from favourites”. To “edit” one, apply a style to some text, then reformat it to however you like, and replace the existing style by adding a new one with the same name – it’ll ask you to overwrite. Stupid, yes?
Finally, it’s sort of possible to select all the text in a document that’s been applied with a certain style. Select “Other…” from the Styles dropdown, go to “Favourite Styles”, select whichever style you want to mass-select in your document, and then hit the “Select” button. Every instance of text that contains those exact attributes in your document (but not your project) should be highlighted. Then you can apply ruler settings, apply another style, etc. I’m pretty sure it mightn’t always work if you’ve made tiny changes to formatting, because the text is selected purely from its conformity to the same attributes as the style, rather than some innate identity.
Favourites is exactly what I was talking about - that is Apple’s version of “styles” (sort of - it’s what they call it anyway).
This is a strange one, but try the following in Scrivener:
• Click into some text to which this style is applied.
• In the ruler, drag the right margin marker (the downward arrow) to the left somewhere and let it go.
• Then drag the right marker all the way to the right, as far as it will go, and leave it there.
• Re-save the style, overwriting it in your current favourites, and try exporting and testing it out in Word before applying it to other sections.
My guess as to what is happening is this:
The Cocoa text system indents text using settings called, “first line indent,” “head indent” and “tail indent”. So, if you have a first line indent of one inch and a head indent of half an inch, then each paragraph will be indented half an inch with the first line of each paragraph indented another half an inch further than that (one inch). The tail indent works a little differently, though. If it is zero, then the text just goes right up to the right margin, wherever that may be. But if it is non-zero, then it determines how far the text will extend from the left margin. So in your case, my guess is that the tail indent has been set to something that extends beyond the page width in Word. What you need to do is to set it to 0 so that it stops at the right margin, wherever that happens to be. Dragging the right indentation marker in the ruler all the way to the right as far as it will go in Scrivener should set it to 0 for you.
Thank you so much for your help! This is some of the fastest and most comprehensive support I’ve ever received from a software company. The problem seems solved. And, I now understand how the system works much better. Best from Waiheke Island, NZ!! Thanks again…