Today in a discussion with my editor, we decided to change the title of my book (of course it’s still only a working title, but we’re leaning in a new direction). I had named my Scrivener files with the original title, and it seemed like a good idea to change the file name to the new working title.
But Scriv has no Save As command.
Now this is actually a trivial issue, of course, since I could very easily simply change the filename directly in the Finder. But it struck me as odd.
My thoughts: Indeed, Scrivener has no Save As command.
Reason being that it is project based and relies on opening multiple files within a project package. So while running, it holds lots of information about where these files are stored (that is, paths to files within the .scriv package). Saving As to a different location would throw all of this information into disarray, and would not play well with the autosave feature either. Thus, it has Backup To… instead. Like you say, if you need to rename the project, do so via the Finder.
Thanks, Keith. Makes good sense. But now you’ve thrown a little scare into me. Am I playing with fire by wanting to change the name at all. Will I be messing around with Svengali’s, I mean Scrivener’s, file management magic if I change the filename in the finder?
As Amber says, renaming the file will cause no problems. The only thing that will happen, however, is that the preferences for that project will be lost (window frame, currently open document and so on), because these are all saved in the prefs file using the project path (this is standard practice).
Best,
Keith
Yes, I renamed the project file in finder and discovered exactly that. No big deal. Easy enough to reset them.
By the way, I had another great Scriv experience today. Simple, but really satisfying. I have six chapters in my book that describe a process. Each chapter is a phase of the process. I was having a little problem with them, because they were pretty dry. I much prefer the “writerly” material that surrounds these core chapters.
Anyway, I finally broke the back of an organizational structure for the core chapters. I realized I needed to break each one into five identical sections: Intent, Theory, Practice, Outcome, and Review. I was able to quickly set up a template for one chapter, making the original single-document chapter a container with each of the five sections as sub-docs. I was then able to duplicate the template of the sub-docs and quickly mirror the scheme for the remaining five core chapters. Then it was an easy matter to use the split command to populate the new structure within each chapter. Tomorrow I’ll begin to work on testing to see if the parallelism I’m looking for actually works. And if so, I’ll start polishing it up. Of course, I took a snapshot before embarking on this little search and destroy mission, so if it doesn’t work, I’ll’ve lost nothing. Imagine trying to do something like that in Word! Would’ve taken me ages, I’d’ve made tons of mistakes, and probably even lost something in the process.
Hi. I’ve tried renaming my project in the Finder, but when I open the renamed project I get a new one with this name, not the existing project with a different name. If I change the name back again, the project reappears.
I think you will find that it is not a new project at all - just that because all of the preferences have disappeared, all the folders in the binder will be collapsed, the window will be the default size, and nothing will be selected. Try expanding the folders in the binder and you will see that it is actually your project.
