Tables & Bullet Lists

[moonie]

Hello all~!! Love this software but I wanted to make an official feedback post to share my thoughts coming from Google Docs & Libre Office. Decided to stick with Scrivener because I love the binder feature, and I love being able to outline in the same “project” (it soothes my brain seeing everything together in one space), but tables & bullet lists for my outlines are killing me… would love to see a fix for these as I have zero issues with bullet lists & tables in Google Docs & Libre Office.

I tried to provide very short screen recordings of what I mean but the forum site wouldn’t let me upload them… so I provided dropbox links (you can speed up the videos and change the resolution to 1080p so the typing doesn’t get blurry—sorry about that!). Forgive my typos in the videos. I was walking on a treadmill while recording & typing this post. I also recorded a short video to show copy/paste tables from Google Docs into Scrivener (and how it will break) but new uses can only share 2 links in a post. Hopefully this is sufficient. You could always try it out yourself.

Google Doc Tables

Scrivener Tables

Tables

Tables are so unintuitive, clunky, and prone to glitches. It drives me nuts and I typically make my outlining tables in Google Docs/Libre Office then copy/paste them over into Scrivener because it’s so much easier and more reliable. However, once I get them copy/pasted over, the format kinda breaks again…

Tab doesn’t reliably move the cursor to the next column/row like it should but my biggest beef with tables is bullet lists break tables (more on my gripe with bullet lists below). Making a bullet list isn’t as simple as

* words

you have to highlight the text, choose a list from the toolbar, then keeping type to make your list. I’m not a big fan of the giant bullet list indent either (more on that below).

I also have no idea why my table was randomly black on top and gray on the bottom. /s

Bullet Lists

Not only are bullet lists an impossible headache to format within tables, they have crater-sized indents that I find…unpleasant. I guess I care a lot about aesthetics, but like I said, Google Docs & LibreOffice handle these things just fine so it seems silly (to me) that Scrivener makes it so difficult to manage.

Upon researching the forums here, I found a “fix”: create your list, use the ruler to make adjustments to the indent, and create a new style using the new formatting. It works but lists in Google Docs/LibreOffice just work better and they look better too.

Bullet lists in tables are impossible and they constantly break especially if you try to apply a style to fix the large indent…(shown in video). After applying the style and hitting enter my cursor was pushed out of the table, even though hitting enter works fine if you’re not trying to use a style to fix the bullet lists. In other programs, you start a list, type whatever you like, hit enter, and away you go… then you can quickly tab to the next block. It’s so easy. Scrivener on the other hand breaks. It will push my cursor out of the table and I have to turn invisibles on to find my cursor within the table again.

---

Overall I realize these are personal gripes and some people probably don’t even notice! Heck, I would assume most people don’t outline in tables at all and bullet lists work as intended because most users aren’t asking them to be anything other than what they are, but hey, I like my organized tables and I want them to look nice. Google Docs just works and Scrivener kinda falls behind in some ways. I was even impressed by LibreOffice working as I needed it to but Scrivener doesn’t hold up.

Sure, I could use cork board mode to outline and that way I could move my chapters around freely (which I have done…the bullet lists still drive me buts!) but I have to use the table outline first in my process. My brain treats it as a non-negotiable… and since this is a writing-focused software that is truly unique, I just wish it came with all of the bells & whistles to make it even more competitive.

Thanks!

[rms]

Welcome to Scrivener and the Scrivener forum.

Re your issues with tables … recommend you use your favorite table-maker software and copy/paste the table images as PNG files, not tables. Store the source for the tables in Scrivener Research binder. Keep it simple.

[cavalierex]

Scrivener uses native (Mac or Windows) capabilities for editing RTF documents. Every document that you create in the Binder is really an RTF document saved on disk. When you edit your document in the Editor, Scrivener is using the native toolset to view/edit/save that file.

RTF can do a lot of things, most notably store “rich text” style metadata, and even embed images.

But I agree with you: RTF’s handling of tables and bulleted lists is really antiquated, limited, and full of friction points.

Unfortunately, Scrivener is built upon RTF, so it shares those friction points. (Until perhaps one day when L&L decides to use a different underlying storage method or text engine. Maybe for the New App.)

[jkittycarr]

I’m with you, moonie! In particular, tables in Scrivener drive me bananas–throwing my vote behind this one.

Thanks also for the 411 on RTF, cavalierex.

[AntoniDol]

@jkittycarr

tables in Scrivener drive me bananas

Remember that RTF stores tables width settings as percentages. So, make sure all collums have a percentage, totaling to 100% for the entire Table.

[jkittycarr]

Thank you! I’m an advanced MS Word user, and this is super helpful, although I find myself falling down a rabbit hole. Table is better but cramped, and I want to resize margins for a single document/page to get more real estate.

From what I can tell after poking around, I should be able to change the margins by dragging the ruler but can’t (no “blue bar”). I read applying landscape formatting to a single page is out because it’d apply to the whole project. Then I read maybe I could mess with Section settings, which is doable but intimidating and I don’t know if that’s the right solution anyway… Any tips?

[jkittycarr]

Oh. Is it just the view I’m in? Opening in Quick Reference is a short term solution (table set at 100% expands easily to whatever window size), though it’d still be helpful to understand page set up for scrivening view.

[RevoTiLlor]

Do your Table in Word and incorporate it into Scrivener using the <$include> placeholder.

You can read up on this in the PDF document available from Help > List of All Placeholders… page 8.

No, compiling will not change the orientation for a single page or a group of pages, but can reasonably fit 8 columns of legible text at a 9-point font in Portrait View.

Also, consider that you may be using a scaling higher than 100% for your Scrivener Editor. For example, mine is 175% (and in Word, I work at Page Width), which, in both cases, is just a screen scaling setting that does not affect the actual font size.

Tables are easier to manipulate in Word, with columns of different sizes, just by dragging their borders.

[jkittycarr]

Ah, thanks! The tip about the placeholder Help reference is gold for future reference. I think I’m tracking on your recommendation regarding scale–Even in portrait, shrinking the font size in the table and zooming in is directionally what I’m solving for. This works as a hack. Second hack is to open Scrivening in Quick Reference, which gives the effect of Word “View” where Scrivening Editor is “Print Layout” and Quick Reference is “Web Layout”.

Does this mean Scrivener doesn’t support having a variety of page layouts within one document, even through messing with Section Type settings?

To draw a Word comparison, inserting a section break allows for different formatting before and after the break (e.g., section A is in Portrait, section B is in Landscape). Not to imply the definition of “Section” in Word and Scrivener are the same–I’ve no idea.

If resizing margins/change page layout isn’t possible, it’s not the end of the world but curious if the option exists (and if the juice is worth the squeeze, seeing as how these tables aren’t content but notes related to content development–which isn’t to say they’d never be compiled/printed).

[RevoTiLlor]

Firstly, Scrivener itself has no concept of what a page should look like. However, compile does, though it’s a post-editing process.

When compiling, you can set your Page Setup to Landscape. In your use case, you’d want to only compile the Table document on its own and you can do so by selecting Current Selection, because that’s a way to compile something outside of Draft/Manuscript.

Select Compile Format Designer > Page Settings > Page Setup > Orientation.

Another way would be to print the Table document to PDF or to a printer, which would save you from having to set up a generic Section Layout in Compile Format Designer, allocate a Section Type to the Table document, and assign the type to the layout, as an As-Is-produced document.

[jkittycarr]

Okay, I think I’m following–Thank you so much for taking time to explain this.

(TBH, my first reaction was “No, you don’t understand what I mean.” You do though. Scrivener acts enough like other word processing platforms I forget it’s actually an alien. I still wish it accommodated sexier tables–and I’m not even complaining loudly. For the record, I like very much what Scrivener does do.)

[RevoTiLlor]

Bonus tip: Create a raw table in Word. Cut it and paste it into Scrivener for Windows. Then populate the content. You’ll find the narrow channel between the border line and the start of your test has been brought over, too, even though there’s no table setting for that in Scrivener.

A little unanticipated advantage.

[jkittycarr]

Oh, nice! Doesn’t just bring text cushion, but the table borders are thin, not fat 1.0 pixel thick. Thanks!