Hi,
I’m trying to use Scrivener for e-books (only) but I’m finding it very complicated so far with the compiling-part.
Could someone please help me with two things since the video tutorial on how to compile for e-books is way too short and the user manual is way too complex for a “text beginner”.
I’d really like to remove the automatic indent that the system creates when compiling, see attached image. I’d also like the text to be left-aligned, not full-width (which makes the text into square boxes) on all the text as it comes out after compiling, please see the same image.
Any help is great 
Thanks,
Sofia
In the Formatting pane of Compile, tick the “Override text and notes formatting” at the top, then select the row in the table for the document type and level you want to format–the image below shows modifications made to the Level 1+ text document row, which in this instance is the only one that’s compiling the text (folders and document stacks are only set to include titles). Level 1 indicates items directly within the compile group (most likely your Draft folder, so Level 1 is anything that is a direct child of the Draft), Level 2 would be sub-items of Level 1 items, etc. The “+” means that the settings for that row apply to the given level and everything higher. So Level 1+ documents means the settings for that row will apply to all single text documents; settings in the Level 1+ folders row apply to all folders, etc. Your table may look a little different if you’ve added rows or are using a compile preset that has additional rows already set up. Just take a look at your binder structure to see which documents you’re trying to format and compare that to the table to select the appropriate row. There’s no need to create a new row–e.g. to add a Level 2 row to the text documents–unless you need to assign different formatting for the same item type at different levels in your binder. If all your text documents are going to look the same, Level 1+ will take care of it even if they’re all at Level 3.
So, select the row in the table whose formatting you want to adjust, then in the sample text area below, click in the main body text section and then set the left alignment by clicking the button in the format bar. Note that how this looks ultimately will depend on the eReader and file type–I’m pretty sure that the Kindle always displays text justified, but you can get left alignment for epubs.
To remove the first-line indent for all the body text, just drag the indent marker in the ruler there all the way to the left. If you only want to remove first-line indents from the first paragraph of each document, leave the ruler as it is and click the “Options” button in the upper right. Select “Remove first paragraph indents” and then choose from among the defining options. “New pages” means documents that start after a section break (set in the Separators pane of compile or with a forced “Pg Break Before”); “each new document” means each individual item in the binder that’s being compiled.
Hi Jennifer!
I’m sorry for my late reply but I suddenly got ill and had to lay in bed for a few days.
Thank you soo much for taking the time to explain this to me, I solved the indent issue in no time at all and my book now looks great 
The left-aligning of the text I did according to your guiedlines but this doesn’t seem to work out…The strange thing is that it looks like it works out in the editor field because everything becomes left-aligned perfectly there. But after I’ve compiled it’s gone. I think Kindle does show left-aligned text, I have an e-book from another author where it does. If anyone else knows how to resolve please drop me a line.
Thanks again Jennifer
All the best,
Sofia
Ah, you are right; you can override the alignment. So here, this should work:
In the Layout section of Compile, check the box at the bottom for “E-book contains script formatting”, then click the “Customize CSS…” button. Wipe everything there and just put in
p {text-align: left;}
Et voilà.
I hope you’re feeling better!
Jennifer, you have made my day!!!
It works like a charm and my e-book now has it all :=)
Thank you ever so much!
Sofia
Great, glad that worked! Just to let you know, this has been simplified for the next update so that the text alignment will work the same for .mobi compile as for .epub–that is, if you set it as left-aligned in the formatting pane, it will be left-aligned on the Kindle; you won’t need to go messing with the custom CSS. Apparently Apple decided to just assume left alignment when generating HTML since that’s the default for most browsers, but since the Kindle defaults to justified, their great plan of laziness backfired there. As I understand it, Keith has painstakingly gone through and added the left-alignment style to all the p classes that were missing it, so it will work beautifully now.
