I have numerous pieces of text in the binder. Many of these contain (admittedly large) linked images (Edit>Insert>Image linked to file). When I try to move such a text (either in the binder or on the corkboard), Scrivener freezes for a long time, and when it wakes up nothing has happened. When I remove the images from the text, the text moves without problems. What is happening here, what to do about it? I do’t know how long this problems is present already, since I only recently started moving text. Maybe related: searches may take a very long time, as does generating an outline.
Does the problem occur only after the project has been open for a while or a number of items loaded, or do you notice that the slow-down increases the longer the project is running? It sounds like it could be a memory issue with displaying the images, although it’s odd that would affect working with the items on the corkboard, where the text (with the image) isn’t being loaded. If you reboot the computer and then open the project and move some of these items around in the binder, do you encounter the problem immediately?
Searches also shouldn’t be affected by images, since they’re not included in the search index. Are you running the latest version of Scrivener, 1.8.6? There were some bug fixes to the search operation in the last couple of updates, so if you’re running an older version, just updating may fix this. You could also try selecting Tools > Save and Rebuild Search Indexes. That may take a moment or two to complete but may also fix the lag problem if it was caused by a corrupted search file.
Rebuilding the indexes did solve the slow response - I should have thought about that myself. Thanks for the heads-up.
However - the move problem persists. I did some testing and I came up with the following conclusion:
Inserting a jpg-image in a piece of text gives no problem with moving that text (binder or corkboard). Inserting a bmp or tif file gives the move problem. And linking to a file (of any type: jpg, bmp, tif) gives the move problem. The link option is the most useful for me - keeps the size of the project small, but most important, it allows me to modify the pictures without having to delete and insert them again in the scrivener project. With the move problem the link option is useless! I really hope some-one can solve my problem.
Glad the rebuild solved the search lag problem.
For the drag freeze, if this is happening in all projects, it may be that the installation files are damaged. To deal with that possibility, try uninstalling Scrivener, deleting the “Scrivener” installation folder if it isn’t fully removed during the uninstall, and then downloading a fresh copy from here and installing again. Uninstalling will not affect your existing projects, although you’ll need to open them via the file browser after reinstalling before they’re added back to the Recent Projects list. You can also save your program settings before uninstalling by going to Tools > Options… and choosing “Save Preferences” from the Manage menu button. After the uninstall/reinstall process, just return there to load the saved preference file.
If reinstalling does not fix the problem, I’d next look to a conflict with other installed software. An easy way to test that is by booting into Safe Mode and running just Scrivener to move the files with images as you were doing before, to see if that works successfully in this cleaner environment.
I removed Scrivener completely and re-installed it. No joy, the problem remains. I did not yet try to run Scrivener in safe mode. If I do, and the problem dissapears, I will know that there is a conflict - but the question will be: what is the conflict? Windows is not going to tell me. Are there any conflicts know? Are there any programs known to interfere with Scrivener?
I removed a lot of pictures and picture links. The program almost reacts normally now. To keep the speed high, I have to rebuild the indexes often (index problem related to my problem?) however. Being unable to use pictures makes Scrivener a lot less useful for me. I still hope that there is a simple answer…
If the same test works in Safe Mode but doesn’t in the normal boot up, the next step would be tracking down which programs and services are running and disabling them in batches to test, which you can do with the various options in Microsoft’s msconfig tool.
That said, I think this is just down to having so many hi-res images within the text. Given that you are using linked images, I’d try swapping out the full-size images for a thumbnail version–make a copy of the directory where the images are stored, to keep your high quality ones, then convert the originals to a smaller size. That should improve the performance in Scrivener while you’re working, and you can later replace the thumbnails with the larger res ones.