Again, not sure if I’m missing something…
Split/Merge doesn’t seem undoable. Would like it to be.
Merging adds an extra blank line at the seam of the merge. So using merge as an undo for split adds a blank line at the split point.
Split/merge is not undoable, and neither will it ever be prior to 2.0. Undo is a tricky business in Cocoa (although new technologies make it easier, they are not available to the current implementation of Scrivener).
In a future version you will be able to determine separators in preferences.
Best,
Keith
Hello
… I am trying Scrivener at the moment and like it a lot. But this issue was a big showstopper for me today. I spent hours splitting up a document into index cards with lots of love for detail. Then I decided to work on it by selecting all scrivenings and use the “edit scrivenings” feature. I wanted to take a snapshot before I started hacking away but understood that I have to merge the document first to be able to take a snapshot of all. So I chose Documents>Merge.
To my big shock all my work I did disappeared instantly and I had the document I started with back again 
No way to go back via Undo.
This is a pretty grave issue in my opinion because there is information being erased during this process. All the splits, synopsis, labels etc are gone afterwards. If there is no undo possible there should be
- a warning dialogue beforhand that it is not undoable
- created a new merged document leaving the scivenings untouched, at least it should be offered as an option.
This is certainly also a downside of the automatic save policy of Scrivener. In this case the usual way in which automatic backups are created but the user decides when to save the project could also have saved me. I would have just shut down Scrivener without saving.
I lost hours of work like this. Otherwise I like it a lot so far.
p
(Just to enlighten your bad conscious a bit: Thanks to Apple’s Timemachine I do have a backup of the project file. But the credit for having saved my work goes to Apple, not to Scrivener.)
Actually, you don’t have to merge the documents to take a snapshot. There are two things you could have done - selected all of the documents you wanted snapshots of and chosen ‘Take Snapshots of Selection,’ or just chosen ‘Take Snapshots of All,’ which takes a snapshot of every text document. Both of these options are in the Documents–>Snapshots menu.
Thanks for the hint! I am learning 
Still I think this kind of destructive merge is no good. At least it should be handled with more care by Scrivener.
p
Given the limitations of undo using the current set-up, I suppose a warning wouldn’t be such a bad idea - though perhaps it should only appear if you are merging, say, 5 or more documents, so that it doesn’t get in the way of users who are just merging 2 or 3 documents (where loss won’t be so catastrophic anyway).
I’ve added it to the list of things to look into for the next free update.
All the best,
Keith
just my tuppence Keith -
a lot of other apps (iTunes comes to mind) have a warning pop up and then a tick box for “Do not warn me again”.
Don’t know how easy that is to implement.
Robin
Just to insert my unsolicited opinion, i like Keith’s “if count > 3” method as I am notorious for checking those damn boxes then forgetting that I checked it and then causing the world to come to an end.
The only thing that I like a little better is the idea of the merged files winding up in a new document. Maybe pop up a small requestor asking what name to use.
Again, unsolicited opinion.
I thought pretty much the same. This warning could be a real nuisance if you have to click it away with every little merge.
Still I like the idea of introducing also a “Merge into new document” or “Duplicate & Merge” (Shift+Option+Apple+M). Could also be handy in my opinion. Or how would you otherwise assemble a document from selected scrivenings without loosing them? “Edit Scivenings” and then Copy & Paste into new Scrivening? Or duplicate the scrivenings, and then merge them? A bit complicated. Or is there a obvious simple way that I don’t see?
Thanks for listening!
p
Edit Scrivenings and then copy and paste is the only way at the moment. I don’t think I’ll be adding a “merge to new document” feature any time soon, I’m afraid, as I’m limited on what I can add at the moment given that I am resolved to write The Novel this year. 
Best,
Keith
Very laudable, Keith, and we’re all behind you on that one, but you’re not taking into consideration one thing …
… thanks to the New York Times and others, you’re going to have a flood of new users, many of whom are going to be writing in to the forum for help/advice/sounding off, many of the issues being problems with the Apple text-engine and other matters which are not actually down to Scrivener, and which will take up your time. Look how the number of new people posting has already gone up since the NYT article.
Year 2007 was the year of “coding before novel” … don’t let year 2008 become “forum before novel” …
Mark