I’m starting a new novel project and I can’t figure out how to put in a table of contents. The novel format starts with a chapter and a scene. I don’t, obviously, want my table of contents to be chapter 1. I’m trying to do this in kindle form.
I’m not sure if your post is just a statement or a real question, but if it is the latter, Chapter 22
Creating a Table of Contents of the manual may be of help. 
Thanks - it was a real question. My manual doesn’t have a section called “Creating a Table of Contents” in chapter 22. It has one that says ‘contents.’ I’m hoping that’s it.
Maybe there are different revisions of the manual.
I have a future head ache as well. I started my book as a regular project and not a novel. I need to transfer all my book over to a novel format. My book follows a regular pattern of a haiku on one page, a short story and then a chapter. The way I have it will, I think, create its own auto generated table of contents with each haiku and short story having chapter numbers (with no chapter names) - that’s after I figure out how to put it in the novel format.
I’m probably not making sense.
I’m half tempted to find an expert with a PayPal account to walk me through the process of getting my book over to the novel preset and then ‘kindle-ise’ it. Any takers?
The manual, for the most part, is just gibberish to me.
The latest version of Scrivener is 1.8.6 dated March 2015. Are you sure you’re opening the Windows Scrivener manual? To do so, select it and open it from the Project Template selector. Chapter 22 is on page numbered 223.
If you have a project open already, you can also access the manual from the Help menu or simply pressing F1.
Project Templates are just built from the blank project with some preliminary binder structure and a compile format that matches. If you want the compile settings for the Novel project, they’re already available as the “Standard Manuscript Format” preset in compile. The format assumes a binder structure where chapters are indicated by folders directly within the Draft folder and scenes as text documents within those chapter folders, or a structure of each chapter being a single document immediately within the Draft. You can create a new Novel project just to see how this looks and to read more details on the variations in the template’s About file, and then just move items around in your binder if necessary. You won’t need to transfer anything from one project to another for this.
If you’re setting your haikus and stories apart with page breaks, then the auto-generated table of contents will list them, as you suppose. The TOC is created based off those page breaks, and there’s not a way to adjust that currently in Scrivener. So I’d not worry about that for now, and just make sure the rest of the novel gets formatted the way you want, so that the chapter numbers or titles are correct for the items that should actually have them. Then you can compile to epub and use a free editor like Sigil to clean up the TOC and remove the items you don’t want. From there you can save and use Amazon’s Kindle Previewer to convert to .mobi if that’s the final format you need.
Incredibly helpful.
Now I have to learn the “conventions” (i.e. <***>) so I can make scenes instead of page breaks. It also says that you can put in a symbol, or some such, in between different scenes to let the reader know you’ve moved on to something else.
While the manual does a good job of showing you how to make a basic project, the bulk of it (at least to me) seems like you know a lot more about what’s going on than you do.
I’m going to print it out, again, since someone pointed out I don’t have the current version. So the manual has changed enough that mine has different info on different pages. The problem is that, while it says I can download the update manually on the L&L site, I can’t find out where it is . . . and not for lack of trying.
My computer, for some odd reason, won’t let me auto-update. Says I need Administrator rights and have to download it from where I downloaded it originally.
Grrrrrrrr.
All I want to do is finish my book, but I’m spending hours on this tech stuff. Very frustrating.
Still have that offer out to make some PayPal deposits per hour for a mentor.
Your personal time and info have given me new hope.
Thanks again.
There are a few ways you can create a divider character between scenes. The simplest is to select “Custom” from the drop-down menu options for the Text/Text separator in compile. (If you don’t see the separator options, click the blue arrow button to the right of the Format As menu button to expand the window.) Then just type the symbols you want in the field.
The manual has the potential to be updated with each release. If a Scrivener update introduces new features or makes significant refinements to existing ones, the manual will reflect that. It’s bundled with the program, so you can load it directly from the Help menu in Scrivener. It’s also available separately on our support page.
Fastest solution for the update trouble is to download the installer manually from the site (here’s a direct link) and then run that with Scrivener closed. You can install over your existing version and essentially do the same as what the auto-update would do. Depending on what caused the auto-update not to work (and it could be any number of things, from security software to permission errors to incorrect registry settings), the reinstallation may resolve the problem for next time.