Saving different groups of Documents to Compile - Do They Exist

[aengineer]

I suspect that the following must exist, but I’ve been unable to find it.

Goal: Save alternative groups of documents to compile.

I’d like to be able to save and retrieve different groups of documents with the compile tag turned on or off.
e.g. Group-1 includes all the documents at the time of saving the groups. Group-2 includes only a subset of the documents. Group-3 includes a different subset.
Does this facility exist, probably with a name I cannot think of?

If it doesn’t what is the best workaround to achieve selecting a subset of documents for compiling?

[drmajorbob]

@aengineer

I suspect that the following must exist, but I’ve been unable to find it.

Goal: Save alternative groups of documents to compile.

I’d like to be able to save and retrieve different groups of documents with the compile tag turned on or off.
e.g. Group-1 includes all the documents at the time of saving the groups. Group-2 includes only a subset of the documents. Group-3 includes a different subset.
Does this facility exist, probably with a name I cannot think of?

If it doesn’t what is the best workaround to achieve selecting a subset of documents for compiling?

That’s easy in Scrivener 3 (or the beta). It’s a game-changing improvement on Word.

Here, for instance:

https://www.notion.so/deepspacecorps/Compiling-a-Synopsis-Epigraph-Report-6163f4183bb1427a981053a17ee656de

I can’t test it in Scrivener 1 at the moment. If it can be done there, you’d use Collections in a similar way.

[legacy_rdale]

I just wanted to second the suggestion of using collections. At the compile window, there’s going to be a filter that allows you to select a collection for inclusion or exclusion of the documents listed therein.

You can either add documents to “manual” collections, or if there are searchable metadata values that let you find only the files you want to include (keywords are excellent for this), then you can create search collections and then add or remove such searchable metadata values to your documents, and the saved search collections will automatically update.

I would not bother with the Include flag, as that’s a lot of trouble for your stated purpose. Typically, that’s a better fit if you only have a handful of documents you’re pulling in or taking out, or for notes documents that you keep in your manuscript folder.

[drmajorbob]

@rdale

I just wanted to second the suggestion of using collections. At the compile window, there’s going to be a filter that allows you to select a collection for inclusion or exclusion of the documents listed therein.

You can either add documents to “manual” collections, or if there are searchable metadata values that let you find only the files you want to include (keywords are excellent for this), then you can create search collections and then add or remove such searchable metadata values to your documents, and the saved search collections will automatically update.

I would not bother with the Include flag, as that’s a lot of trouble for your stated purpose. Typically, that’s a better fit if you only have a handful of documents you’re pulling in or taking out, or for notes documents that you keep in your manuscript folder.

I leave the flag set to Compile everything, generally. There are better ways to decide what compiles.

If I do want to change the flag, I do it in the Compile->Contents list, where you can do it without going from document to document one at a time in the Binder.