Setting default comment colors

Scrivener
1

I know that many people before have asked on this forum about how to change comment colors, and how to change the comment color that will apply to all future comments, until you change it again. However, my questions are different. I know how to change comment colors both in the menu bar and by right-clicking on each comment. I’m wondering if it is possible to change comment colors in other ways:

  1. Is it possible to set a default comment color that will apply to all new comments even if you change it on occasion for an individual comment? So, I would like to have a yellow default color that I can occasionally change to blue by right-clicking on an individual comment—but then have the next comment again be yellow instead of blue.
  2. Is it possible to change the color of all comments at once? Without individually selecting each comment in the inspector? (I tend to have dozens of comments in each document.) I have not found a way to select-all comments.
  3. Is it possible to set a different default for newly converted comments (converted from footnotes)? I would’ve assumed this was not possible, except that Scrivener already does it. I use pale yellow and pale blue comments always, yet whenever I convert a footnote to comment, the converted comment is always the same light-gray color, which I have never myself set. This must be coming from some system default, and I’m wondering if I can change it.

These are issues that arise for me because I use two different types of comment colors (one mainly, another on occasion), and I prefer these comments to have a very pale/transparent hue (not one of the 5 bright presets), and so each time I add them I have to go in and manually change the color using the color picker. I have assumed, based on my own experimentation and looking through the forums, that I cannot change the 5 presets; but if that’s possible, that would also be a slight amelioration for me.

Thanks!

2

You can easily change multiple comments by using ctrl key and clicking ones you want to change and then change the color as you would for a single comment. Or use shift and start at first comment and click last one to change all at once. This works for comments across multiple documents in Scrivenings view.

3

Thanks, but I’m afraid that the shift first-to-last option doesn’t work for me, because I also have dozens if not hundreds of footnotes. I don’t see any way to select-all for comments only. Even the “find” by format option only lets you cycle through comments, not select them all. Is there another option?

(And yes, I know how about selecting multiple comments. But since I have dozens, spread out among often 200+ footnotes (I write law review articles), this is very painful to do.)

4

If you did in scrivenings view can see all the comments in one place. Yes can’t automatically pick out but holding the Ctrl key could select dozens in 2-3 minutes. Or create several projects based on how you want comment colors to be and merge later.

5

Only the comment colour can be changed, so in this case selecting both comments and footnotes together won’t matter. In Scrivenings mode, select one comment, then Cmd-A to select all the comments and footnotes in the inspector, and Ctrl-click to access the comment context menu and change the colour. The footnotes won’t be affected.

That will however set the comment colour for the next comment created; that’s just how the comment colouring works at present, so there’s not a way to make it not apply to the next one but instead revert to your default colour. Likewise, there’s currently no setting for the comment colour when converted from a footnote; it just takes the default grey footnote colour.

1 Like
6

I do set a different color in a Theme. Overriding the setting in the QSS-Stylesheet can be done, but that color will become the new color for Comments.
I’ll have to check the Stylesheet for the exact code…

EDIT: No. I lied. I set the default color to one that matches my Theme, but I’ve tried earlier and did not succeed to set the color of Comments in the Theme.

7

Thanks Mimetic another interesting tidbit. Interesting that selecting the first comment and holding shift and choosing the last one changes comment colors and ignores the footnotes, Nice to know. I don’t use footnotes, yet.

8

Thanks, that’s great to know! I must have somehow just strongly assumed the color of selected footnotes would change, too, and so never tried it.

I would still very much like Scrivener to allow for changing the default color, and would also like the ability to select only comments of a certain color, but being able to change all comments at once is helpful.

1 Like
9

Ah too bad! I was very hopeful. I also tried to create a theme that would do it, but couldn’t find a parameter for comments (just the comments pane).

But thanks for checking!