Hi, I’m new here but have been using Scrivener 3 for years.
The problem that has brought me here is that I discovered this morning (I’m on UK time by the way) is that my templates have totally disappeared. No, they haven’t been deleted. I know, and appreciate, the warning that pops up.
I have dug through backups and tried importing from another project entirely but when I’m in Places for example, and type Cmd-N all I get is a new blank document instead of a new Places document. I’ve opened previous backups and copied the Template File into a blank document and tried Saving As Template file, but no luck with that either. I haven’t got any other ideas to try, and as I’m just setting up my notes for characters and locations I really don’t want to start writing and this happen again.
Hope someone can help me because I’m being driven bananas by this.
Before getting too deep into it, it sounds like there may be some conflation between overall Project Templates, what you see a list of when you use File ▸ New Project..., which would correlate with the File ▸ Save as Template... menu command (your whole project becomes a template, a basis for future projects), as opposed to Document Templates, a concept I would more immediately associate with the concept of having a folder in the binder of your project called “Places”, which when you make new items within it, produces location sheets or whatever.
If it is the latter, then just make sure your Templates folder has the special blue “T” icon, and if not, go into Project ▸ Project Settings..., under Special Folders, and make sure that the template folder is chosen correctly. In the case where you do not see this folder in the list, back out of the dialogue and check the project Trash folder to make sure it wasn’t accidentally trashed.
If you do have to select it, then upon saving your settings the “Places” folder may indeed start working again the way it was before, but if not, use the Documents ▸ Default Template for Subdocuments menu to pick the correct template again, while “Places” is selected. You may also need to do this for any other folders that had been set up with a default template.
My problem is the second Template issue. I corrected the T icon difficulty but as this didn’t solve the problem I was still getting an untitled text document, no matter where I tried to create a new character or setting file.
I then moved on to the Documents>>Default Template for subdocuments and tried to select a subdocument but as the three options were all greyed out. However, I did manage somehow to create one setting sketch but when I tried a second time, this time with the Character sketch, I was given a blank text document,
I hope you can make sense of my account of the doings, and also that I’ve not breached protocol with screenshots.
H.
PS it seems as though i did upset your server with screenshots!!
It kind of does sound like your previous templates folder got trashed. Though, you would in that case still be able to select them, even though the icon is greyed out (that is more a universal treatment of how a trashed item is displayed, for example in snapshots or bookmarks, to help you see its condition and maybe fix it if it isn’t meant to be—like in this case, you probably don’t actually want it there even though it should still work).
But if the menu title is also grey, to the right of the icon, and you cannot use the command, I think the only condition that can cause that is if what you have selected in the binder contains non-group items. For example you can apply a default to a file that has other files indented beneath it (so that its icon changes to a stack of paper), but you cannot apply a default to a file all by itself (single page). Binder items with a blue folder icon can always have a default added because they are always groups, even when nothing is indented beneath it.
So the simplest test you could do is use Project ▸ New Folder, press Esc to confirm that dummy title, and then try with the default subdocument menu. After picking one, press Enter to make a new text item beneath it, which should come up as the template you picked. If that works fine, maybe the easiest thing to do is just drag all of the “Places” over from the previous folder into the new one, and trash the old one. While I can’t think of why one would ever have to do that, if the new one works and the old one doesn’t, might as well be efficient about it.
P.S. You should be able to post screenshots now, your account was too new.
Thanks for replying. you’ve cleared things up, but there’s one thing that is puzzling me about the Default Template for subdocuments. How come when I went to create a new Places document when I was in the Manuscript bit of the Binder I wasn’t given a choice but got given a Character document and is there a shortcut as I find keyboard commands much easier than mouse work.
Is there a list of available shortcuts? It would make it a lot easier for me.
I’m not sure, I couldn’t say without more information on what is being tried precisely.
I can guess a bit from the screenshots—the editor shows a character sheet in the background, which could mean you have a single text item selected, so you won’t be able to set a default template on that.
Otherwise, given the state of the menu commands, which are active and inactive, I think your “cursor” is in the right place, in the binder rather than the text editor. Documents commands tend to prefer document selections rather than text editor activity (there are some exceptions). But again I think the main issue here is what is selected, rather than how.
As for why Places cannot be made in the Draft folder (or “Manuscript” if it is renamed to that): maybe it is not a text file? Templates can be anything, like PDF forms meant to be filled out, or Scapple files, but files like that can only be created outside of the Draft.
That said, I don’t see that condition anywhere in your screenshots. Both Character Sketch and Places Sketch are lit up in the second screenshot, so maybe I’m misunderstanding.
The shortcut you see gets assigned to the first template in the template folder, so reserve that slot for the one you are using most often at the moment. But you can also make your own shortcuts. For example, following the rules given in that article, a shortcut to Project->New from Template->Places Sketch should work.
Shortcuts are otherwise all documented in the user manual, under Appendix A, Menus & Keyboard Shortcuts.
