Ive browsed the help docs and the forum but not found exactly what I’m looking for so would appreciate some help please!
Basically, I want to be able to export everything to a single text document.
For example - in my current project I have numerous chapter folders with scenes in plus all my reference folders / character lists / notes / annotations etc.
I want a quick way to export the lot into one document (a plain text or word or openoffice or pdf etc).
The options I’ve found seem to only export the novel itself - not any of the additional background info.
How can I export everything into one single document?
In case you are wondering, the reason I want to do this is just as a way of having a quick emergency backup that will contain everything in case my computer breaks. As a small text only file it should be easy to upload to dropbox or evernote or even email as a safe speedy emergency backup.
Yes, it does. You could then aggregate the separate files into a single file.
Or you could aggregate them first: create a new document (call it Total, for example) then go sequentially to each file you want to include, COM-a to mark everything (or as much as you want), the CON-click > Append Selection to Document > Total. That way you’d generate a single file (Total, or whatever you call it) with copies of all the requisite data, which you then could export as a single .txt.
Thanks for your help but that isn’t sufficient for what I’m trying to achieve unfortunately.
A single click “save all data as one document” button or save / export option is what i really need as it would enable a quick file with all info in for email or sending up to dropbox or evernote etc just for added security - sure you might lose the organisation / layout to some degree but you’d have the hard data.
If all you want to do is send a single file to another computer for backup purposes, you can just use File->Backup to and tell it to zip the output. Then it could be emailed, or saved to a dropbox folder. In fact, the Backup pane of the preferences window allows you to send automatic backups (which happen when you close by default) to any folder you want. That folder could be dropbox, so it works really well as a backup for your entire project.
If you want a single document for other purposes, then you’d have to format everything so that you can transfer it to your main Manuscript/Draft folder (it can be renamed, but it’s the folder where you put your actual writing). Then the compile process can make them all one document.
Why is this “astonishing”? The entire purpose of Scrivener is to allow you to write a manuscript or document, and to bring in research materials for reference. To that end, you build up your manuscript in the “Draft” folder and can compile it to a single document. If you need to get your research material out of Scrivener again, you can export it as multiple files so that you have exactly the same files you started with if you need. It would hardly be surprising if Scrivener didn’t allow you to compile all the research documents into a single documents given that this is not at all the purpose of the program - no more astonishing than the fact that iPhoto doesn’t allow you to add new layers to documents or that Word doesn’t allow you to edit image files.
However, you can do what you want. Just put the documents you want to combine into a collection and Compile the collection instead of the Draft folder.
