I bought a Scrivener license a few years ago, but only started to use the program recently as I’m writing an academic book, which requires me to handle vast amounts of documents, partly as pdfs, party as image files. For the most part I have been very satisfied with Scrivener, but a recurring issue that keeps disrupting my work flow is the insertion of scrivener links to a particular document. Usually, I will get to a point in my draft where I make a point that relates to one of my research documents.
Now, because I’m ‘writing up’ the results of many hours of reading all sorts of documents, I will make this point from memory. I will then do a search for the document(s) in question by doing a keyword search. At this point, I would like to insert a link to the documents I have identified as relevant, and this is where things become more complicated than they need to be. The easiest would be to right-click the documents I want to link and choose ‘copy document link’, then highlight a word in my draft and insert my document link via an item added to the context menu right there (not as a full-blown address, but as something I call up by clicking that word). Somewhat less straightforward would be to ‘copy document link’ then call up Scrivener Link from the Edit menu, and be given a choice to paste that link (similar to the way you link web pages in Edit->Add Link).
Instead I have to do Edit->Scrivener Link->Research. But which of the many research subfolders does contain the document I’m trying to link? My search has given me the document, but not its location, so I now need to click around to figure out where it is, then click my way through folders and sub-folders until I get to the document I want to link.
Call me naive, but wouldn’t it be simple to make this process more simple along the ways I indicated?
If you’re trying to add an internal link (aka a Scrivener link), you can do this easily with your method by simply selecting the text you want to link, then holding the Option key while dragging and dropping the reference document from the binder onto the selected text.
“Copy Document Link” provides a URL to the reference document meant for use outside of this Scrivener project; when clicked, will open the project and then open the referenced document. It still works from within the project to open the referenced document, but it won’t for instance translate to an RTF bookmark when compiled or follow the Navigation preferences for internal links (the external document link will always open in a QuickReference panel). Since they provide a full path, they’re also static–if you move the project to another computer, for instance, the link will be broken.
Going by your comments, I think the internal Scrivener links are what you’re after, but you can read a little more in the manual them if you’re not sure; I may not be clear what ultimately you nee them for. (Section 9.5 goes over Scrivener links. External document links are explained briefly in Appendix A.3; they’re treated just like other hyperlinks to files outside your project, so there’s not really anything special about them from within the project.) If you do want the external links, I’d set up a keyboard shortcut for “Add Link” (and the same one for “Edit Link”, as the menu name changes if you’re focused within a link), then do as you’re doing: right-click the document in the binder to “Copy Document Link”, then select the text in the document and use the shortcut to call up the Link dialog and paste in the copied link, select “No Prefix” and done. If you prefer the keyboard the whole way, you could also make a keyboard shortcut for “Copy Document as External Link”, the main command in the Edit menu equivalent to the context menu’s “Copy Document Link”.
The first method you indicated works perfectly for what I want to do. Many thanks, and apologies for suggesting a feature that already exists.