I know that I used this Text Tidying menu on a previous manuscript to remove multiple spaces, but when I try to do that with my current manuscript, the menu is greyed out. Even when I select the text, this menu can’t be accessed. What am I doing wrong? Thanks!
There doesn’t seem to be a universal problem with the feature, I’m afraid we’d need a little more information to go on. For example, what steps do I need to take, starting from the creation of a new blank test project, to see the menu command not become available while the cursor is in a text editor? It would also be helpful to know Scrivener and Mac version numbers.
I finally discovered that I need to select each scene and then the menu appears. I thought I’d remembered a more universal way to do this for the full manuscript, but perhaps I was wrong. This will suffice for now. Thanks!
Oh okay, yeah most of the commands in this menu require the cursor to be in the editor, and the risky one (to delete struck-through text) requires an active text selection. The general rule of thumb is that global commands that can be used on selected items in the binder are found in the Documents menu, as they operating on Documents (even if the net effect of that is to Edit the text).
That said, you can clear out messy spaces easily with Scrivenings mode. Just load the whole Draft into Scrivenings, make sure the cursor is in the editor, and run the command. No text selection is required for those commands that stay lit up with just a blinking cursor. That means all visible text will be cleaned.
In Scrivinings mode, Text Tidying for ‘remove empty lines between paragraphs’ is not grayed out. I select all in the editor for full manuscript and select the feature but it doesn’t work on full doc. It DOES work on individual chapters but I have a very long manuscript. any advice?
I’ve moved this over to a discussion that goes over the particulars of how this feature works and in what contexts. While it starts at a place prior to where you’re at (they OP wasn’t even in the text editor yet), the last post may still help. One thing of note is that a selection is not necessary.
Otherwise, if that does not help, we would need more detail on what some of the words you are using mean, in terms of software features, as one can use the word ‘chapter’ or ‘manuscript’ to mean quite a variety of things. A simple checklist, describing what you are trying against the interactive tutorial, can make for a good demonstration as we’d all be on the same page.
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thanks. The issue was I was ‘selecting all’ in the scrivenings window. once i just put my cursor in the window (no selection) after selecting manuscript in the binder, it worked fine.
Interesting, I had never actually tried doing that, but yes it looks like an active selection that crosses section boundaries in Scrivenings mode will block the command from working. It may be that command is unsafe to use in this particular context, given how it removes empty lines, which the dividers might qualify as technically.
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