Request for a table or sheet binder item type

Scrivener
1

Hi,

wanted to say, in general i do love the Program, and just recently bought it after a trial period. Prior i used a Word and Excel. So i am used to organize my notes in Tables. And as i now have started to convert my notes to the program and such, after i was sure to use Scrivener and bought a License, i find myself a little annoyed with the lack of ability to do Tables.

They are such a great way to organize things for fiction novels. It doesn’t really effect the actual novel writing, but for my notes i like to have… let’s say a table that keeps track of all the Military Ranks, as i am writing a Military Novel.

So my notes on that, for example, is having these Ranks in the table based on Hiarchy. Keeping a space for what their ranks compare to. For example, i have an entry for Argbed. Argbed is a military rank comparable to a castellan in the persian army around the 2nd century. And then next to that, it would say exactly that in the “notes Column” and then next to that, i have a column that lists characters with this rank. Finally, there is the column where i put in links to websites i found, in the case of the Argbed for example a link to Wikipedia.

But i quickly noticed that I can’t resize the table easily. It is not really a deal breaker, but close to it. I really wish you guys would add an excel file type to the program, so we can organize notes like that. I tried adding the .xlsx, i also converted it into a .tsv… neither seems to work. It tells me that its gonna be converted into .rtf and i figured that maybe the tab spaced convertion would work, but it doesn’t. (I mean, not that i imagined it to be legible).

I can copy&paste the tables, but then there is the issue with resizing the table in the txt document. It doesn’t work the way i’d expect it, by drag and drop the table width. And via a youtube video i found out that i can enter a percentage (it doesn’t seem to be on every table, some have a percentage other have a regular number) and it will give me some control of the resized table.

Maybe there is a workaround and i haven’t found it. I searched google for a way to reize the column and some things people suggested don’t work (if they ever did) in the current version… and others, like a video tutorial by an older lady got me the percentage resize solution.

And i get that i am new, and maybe i am just blind to the option just yet. But regardless i figured it might prove to be useful to have a new user perspective on this and the fact that i do use tables to organize some of my notes for Novels and the way its organized doesn’t seem intuitive to me, inside the program, if its possible at all (and i don’t think it is).

Anyway, thank you for reading this far, if you did.

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You can import Excel files into the Research Folder, and then open them directly in Excel. That’s going to be the best solution if you already have a lot of Excel sheets.

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Yeah, I was afraid this is what it was going to be. I kinda hoping for a one shop solution.

I mean, the reason i found Scrivener attractive was that i could basically create an index card thing of nested hierarchies. So i wouldn’t need to keep opening other files.

Not sure i am making sense here. I just kinda hoped i would get around needing other programs, that is all.

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I think, for a lot of things we might use spreadsheets for, the Outliner editor view mode, along with its customisable columns and the ability to create your own columns (with special data types like checkboxes or list pulldowns), can solve a lot.

But, if you’re talking about just wanting to present some singular data point (like military ranks) in a certain fashion that you’re accustomed to, then yes, the overall project-level metadata system and outliner view isn’t the right tool for the job.

The question is whether tables for this kind of information is the best way forward. It was, given the Office Suite approach you were using, but if you’re trying to consolidate into a tool that isn’t as all-consuming and massive as an office suite, then some corners may need to be cut. I.e…

I really wish you guys would add an excel file type to the program

Yeah, sure. We’ll get back with you after we make several hundred million USD and hire a thousand developers to do that (or buy out other companies and snuff out their dreams), like Microsoft did. :wink: Meanwhile, our one single programmer will continue to try and do the best they can making a writing program.

In all seriousness though, needing other programs isn’t a bad thing. Where I think Scrivener’s integrated approach excels (yeah, I did that) is in cases where it actually is awkward to use different programs—like marking topical flags on subsections of text. Cmd-tabbing between a spreadsheet and a word processor and trying to come up with creative ways of marking how this small chunk of text within a 60 page scroll view relates to pollination rates and insect decline feedback loops, is a mess. But in Scrivener that subsection is an entry, a card, and you can tack such information right onto it with Keywords, etc. That’s the kind of thing it is really good at, and if that’s mainly what you needed the office suite for, you indeed might be able to ditch it.

But replicating the entire universe of software inside of itself? Nah. Nor should it. PDFs will always be reviewed and annotated best in dedicated software for doing so. Diagrams will always be best made in such software. Spreadsheet data will never be as well done in anything but a spreadsheet program. Illustrations should always be created and edited in design programs.

So to that end, in acknowledging that professional work could and should use a whole library of tools, Scrivener then strives to make the process of working with those different types of media as seamless as possible; having ready access to them all no matter what computer you’re sitting at, because they are all hosted in the project format, for example; being able to open whatever it is in its editing software with one single shortcut; being able to tag and organise these things with all of the aforementioned metadata tools; the ability to store the reference version in PDF, with the source file for it as a Bookmark for easy double-click editing, etc.

There is that, but play around with what Scrivener gives you outside of the text editor, too. A lot of people end up focusing on that because it’s what they are used to, and get disappointed in how simplistic the bullet/table/etc features are (because again, we don’t have hundreds of millions). There are things you can do with outlining, with freeform corkboards, with the label corkboard view, collections and so on that can solve a lot of problems. Not everything, sure, but these are old design metaphors that have been used to express a lot of complex information over the decades (well before Scrivener). They shouldn’t be underestimated.

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The main hassle with tables is they’re not infinitely scrollable to the right, because of their nature to scale within the confines of the editor’s right margin. So, for instance, the table below, on who was doing what on which day, requires two documents because I’m comparing more that the five characters seen in the table and requires a redundant repeat of the first column of dates.

This Table’s structure (columns) was created in Word, it brings along the left and right gutters in each cell, which Scrivener has no settings to create or change, although it pastes well into Scrivener.

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I dislike typing in Excel. I can’t get my head around having to type Alt+Enter for a hard return. I could settle for Shift+Enter and don’t know why Microsoft have never implemented it as such.

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Hmm. Okay.

I didn’t mean to actually have excel, with all the program language and such, in the software. I was merely hoping for a more functional “table file” akin to the “Text field”. Instead of a Text Field with a “Table Field”, have an actual table, that is nothing but a table, with individual column and row spacing. Maybe the option to “connect” two cells, and that is it.

I just meant a table where i can index things for cross reference. Not one with Diagram code and a Calculator running underneath.

I just meant the equivalent of an empty sheeth, maybe sideways, with some lines on it… ideally with customizable column with by column. So i can keep column B short, because it only has <5-digit numbers, while making Column C use of some space of B and D, so the text entry of “notes” has a little more breathing room.

And as well as something like this:

And the example provided there is also a nice example, as the table sems to track what is happening at the same day in a multi pov style narrative.

For me, at least at the moment, the main hassle is the inablity to just drag and space tables, but i fully admit that i would love if i could double up the table cards somehow. But i figured worst case i am cutting it in half and make two cards that are meant to be viewed side by side to create a whole.

I believe googles free version is using cntr+Enter, it might be a bit more comfortable. But yeah, every program seems to be having their own way of doing it.

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By the way, please do consult these existing discussions on why tables are as they are, and why it would be very difficult for them to be anything other than that. I would suspect a good deal of repetition in this new thread could be avoided, by doing so:

I have left this thread separate though for the novel idea of having some kind of table “object” in the outline that is not bound to limitations of RTF tables in the editor.

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