Hello All,
Seeing as the initial Twitter announcement thread developed so maturely into a Monty Python homage, I thought I’d do another.
Starting on Monday 26th October we will be sending out a ‘Tip of the Day’ tweet. These will be Scrivener related, not entirely random! (Although I do see potential for merriment there.) So if you would like to see our Scrivener usage tips, along with our general tweeting, please tune in:
All the best,
David
TIPS OF THE DAY POSTED ON TWITTER AND FACEBOOK SO FAR
Tip of the Day: To print an outline, go to File > Compile Draft and include only titles and synopses.
Tip of the Day: To give highlight colours meaningful names, use the panel from Edit > Find > Find Highlight…
Tip of the Day: To adjust page margins and other print settings, go to File > Page Setup… > Settings > Scrivener.
Tip of the Day: To get a word/char count for selected text, ctrl-click on the selection; selection stats appear at the bottom of the menu.
Tip of the Day: To get statistics for your whole draft, go to View > Statistics > Project Statistics.
Tip of the Day: To highlight a PDF: View > Open in > External Editor to highlight in Preview/Acrobat. Switch doc and back to see changes.
Tip of the Day: If you don’t want to include formatting when pasting text, just use Edit > Paste and Match Style (shift-opt-cmd-V).
Tip of the Day: To expand the window to fit the screen, use Window > Zoom to Fit Screen (ctrl-cmd-=).
Tip of the Day: To save your preferences to restore them later, use the “Manage…” pop-up button at the bottom of the Preferences… window.
Tip of the Day: To change the colour of an annotation, just click into the annotation and use the Text > Font > Show Colors panel.
Tip of the Day: To split up text after importing, use Documents > Split at Selection (cmd-K) or Split with Selection as Title (opt-cmd-K).
Tip of the Day: To generate a synopsis from the current text selection, click on the button above the index card in the inspector.
Tip of the Day: To assign a label or status to multiple documents, ctrl-click on the selected docs in the binder, corkboard or outliner.
Tip of the Day: To assign keywords to multiple docs, select the docs and drag & drop the keywords onto one of them from the Keywords HUD.
Tip of the Day: File > Backup Project To… allows you to create zipped-up backups of your project. Recommended!
Tip of the Day: Dropbox (getdropbox.com) with Scriv’s File > Backup Project To (as zip) is a great way to back up and share Scriv files.
Tip of the Day: To switch between project and document notes, click Document Notes in the Inspector. Project notes can be viewed by any doc.
Tip of the Day: To copy whole documents, use Documents > Duplicate (cmd-D). Or use Simple Duplicate, which won’t copy subdocuments.
Tip of the Day: Preferences only affect text formatting for new documents. For existing docs, use Documents > Convert > to Default Text Style.
Tip of the Day: Text > Ghost Notes Mode fades out unselected annotations and footnotes. Great for making them less obtrusive.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener Links (Text > Scrivener Link, or drag docs into text) allow you to make links between documents in a project.
Tip of the Day: Use the References pane in the Inspector to create links to external files that you don’t want to import into the project.
Tip of the Day: Make sure files have extensions before importing them into Scrivener. Scrivener uses the extension to determine file type.
Tip of the Day: By default Compile Draft uses novel format. Turn off ‘Override…’ in the Formatting tab to export without changing format.
Tip of the Day: To get chapter numbers when you Compile Draft, just enter the <$n> tag into your chapter titles. 2.0 will make this easier!
Tip of the Day: RTF is by far the best export format. To export with footnotes, images, headers and comments intact, choose RTF.
Tip of the Day: To print your entire draft, go to File > Compile Draft and click on the "Print“ button instead of "Export“.
Tip of the Day: To export an entire project with the directory structure intact, select all in the binder and go to File > Export > Files…
Tip of the Day: When exporting to Final Draft 7 FCF, be sure to check the options to adjust quotes/ellipses/dashes etc in Compile Draft.
Tip of the Day: When the editor is split, the pane that is active displays an underline in the document title in its header bar.
Tip of the Day: If you accidentally hit delete on a file, the file is not permanently deleted, just moved to Scrivener’s Trash folder.
Tip of the Day: The Keywords HUD (heads-up display) allows you to organise keywords and drag them onto documents to assign them.
Tip of the Day: The little arrow next to the magnifying glass in the toolbar search field allows you to change the search parameters.
Tip of the Day: Project Settings allows you to set up your own list of labels and status descriptions, & you can rename ‘Label’ & ‘Status’.
Tip of the Day: Holding the Option key down while clicking on a triangle in the binder/outliner will expand everything inside the folder.
Tip of the Day: Holding the Option key down while dragging in the binder/outliner will disallow drop-ons, making dropping between easier.
Tip of the Day: Project Targets allow you to set a word/character count target for the entire draft, and for each writing session.
Tip of the Day: To exit a search, either click on the X in the search field or in the footer bar beneath the binder.
Tip of the Day: View > Reveal in Binder (opt-cmd-R) will show where the current editor document is in the binder.
Tip of the Day: You can set up full screen mode to look like an old-fashioned computer by playing with the Full Screen Preferences.
Tip of the Day: To enter line breaks into synopses when editing in the corkboard or outliner, use Opt-return instead of just return.
Tip of the Day: Create custom project templates by setting up a bare bones project with settings you want and using File > Save As Template.
Tip of the Day: You can customise all keyboard shortcuts in Scrivener and other Cocoa programs via System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse.
Tip of the Day: Coloured text will be exported as revised text when exporting to Final Draft 8 FDX format.
Tip of the Day: To see where a project is saved, ctrl-click on the .scriv icon next to the project name at the very top of the window.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener supports MultiMarkdown (MMD). MMD is a simple mark-up syntax that can be converted into LaTeX and XHTML.
Tip of the Day: New docs use the current mode. If in script mode, new docs will use script mode. Cmd-3 switches between script and prose.
Tip of the Day: Folders and text files are much the same. To see the text of a folder, click on the corkboard icon.
Tip of the Day: You can convert a text file into a folder and vice versa via Documents > Convert > to File / to Folder.
Tip of the Day: Edit Scrivenings allows you to work on multiple text documents as though they were one, even inside the Research folder.
Tip of the Day: To create your own scriptwriting formats, use Text > Scriptwriting > Script Settings (useful for custom formatting too).
Tip of the Day: Edit > Find > Find Annotation allows you to cycle through all annotations in a project.
Tip of the Day: To make individual documents retain format in Compile Draft (e.g. title pages), check Preserve Formatting in the Inspector.
Tip of the Day: Before making major changes to a text doc, hit cmd-5 (Take Snapshot), so that you can always return to the earlier version.
Tip of the Day: Documents > Convert allows you to convert PDF or web files into text files for editing (some formatting may be lost).
Tip of the Day: Documents > Merge merges selected documents, although Edit Scrivenings is usually better for editing different docs as one.
Tip of the Day: Entering <$p> in the header/footer field in Compile Draft / Text Options will insert the page number in the compiled file.
Tip of the Day: Prefer the Outliner to the Corkboard? Preference > Navigation tab allows you to choose which one gets shown by default.
Tip of the Day: For writing in languages that use accents, turning off typographer’s quotes is recommended.
Tip of the Day: Opt-cmd-up/down arrow zooms in/out on text, PDF and web files.
Tip of the Day: To change the font in multiple documents, set it in Text Editing Preferences and use Documents > Convert > Default Style.
Tip of the Day: Hit cmd-. or opt-Esc while typing to bring up the auto-complete list. Add project auto-complete words via the Edit menu.
Tip of the Day: The two arrows in the footer bar beneath the outliner and corkboard make the other editor show the selected docs.
Tip of the Day: If you would like to change the organisation of your toolbar, go to View > Customize Toolbar…
Tip of the Day: Command-r (cmd-r) will quickly show or hide the ruler.
Tip of the Day: You can get rid of the lines from index cards using the Fonts & Colors Preferences.
Tip of the Day: The lock button at the bottom of the Inspector locks the Inspector to one editor, regardless of which has the focus.
Tip of the Day: If you don’t like the start panel, prevent it from appearing by unchecking “Show start panel…” in Preferences > General.
Tip of the Day: To make the window fit the whole screen, use Window > Zoom to Fit Screen.
Tip of the Day: The scriptwriting features can be bent to set up formatting styles, so can be useful to non-scriptwriters too.
Tip of the Day: If writing in a language in which “i” is not always capitalised, turn this behaviour off via Preferences > Text Editing.
Tip of the Day: Services allow you to get text into Scrivener while working in another application (10.6 users will need to turn them on).
Tip of the Day: You can give the corkboard a different background image or a plain colour background via the Fonts & Colors Preferences.
Tip of the Day: To bring in outlines from OmniOutliner, export from OO as OPML and import the .opml file into Scrivener.
Tip of the Day: The triangle next to the magnifying glass in the toolbar search field provides a menu that allows you to refine your search.
Tip of the Day: To use auto-complete, hit opt-Escape or cmd-period after typing the beginning of a word.
Tip of the Day: To insert symbols or uncommon characters, use the special characters panel by going to Edit > Special Characters…
Tip of the Day: You can customise the margins around the text area via Preferences > Text Editing.
Tip of the Day: To hear your text spoken aloud, Edit > Speech > Start Speaking (Scrivener 2.0 will allow selections to be read out too).
Tip of the Day: To paste text into Scrivener using the default format rather than the original format, use Edit > Paste and Match Style.
Tip of the Day: You can switch the keyboard shortcuts for Paste and Paste and Match Style using the Keyboard System Preferences.
Tip of the Day: You can get rid of shadows from the corkboard by adjusting the slider in the Fonts & Colors Preferences.
Tip of the Day: You can make Scrivener’s interface sparse by changing background colours to white, hiding the toolbar and header bars etc.
Tip of the Day: Clicking on the icon next to the document title in the editor header bar brings up a useful menu.
Tip of the Day: Control-clicking on the icon next to the file name in the header bar brings up the file path.
Tip of the Day: To prevent the binder changing documents in a particular editor, use Lock in Place (opt-cmd-L); the header bar turns pink.
Tip of the Day: To strike through text, select it and hit shift-cmd-hyphen.
Tip of the Day: You can move corkboard pins to the top-right corner so as not to obscure the title via the Fonts & Colors Preferences.
Tip of the Day: Typewriter scrolling keeps typing in the centre of the editor. Turn it on or off in any mode using the Text menu.
Tip of the Day: You can customise the separators that appear between texts in Edit Scrivenings via Preferences > General.
Tip of the Day: Shift-cmd-H highlights text using the last selected highlight colour.
Tip of the Day: Remember that the text around footnotes should appear as you would want it once the footnote is removed (spaces etc).
Tip of the Day: Text > Show Invisibles shows hidden characters such as spaces and line breaks.
Easter Egg of the Day: Hold down the command key while clicking on “About Scrivener” to read some of our favourite quotes…
Tip of the Day: If italics turn into underlines when compiling, turn off “Convert italics to underlines” in Compile Draft > Text Options.
Tip of the Day: You can turn off cursor blinking and even have a retro block cursor - see Preferences > Text Editing.
Tip of the Day: When exporting to plain text, get rid of curly quotes and smart hyphens etc using the Text Options pane of Compile Draft.
Tip of the Day: You can save your Compile Draft settings for use with other projects using the “Save” and “Load” buttons in Compile Draft.
Tip of the Day: Folders open as a corkboard by default, but you can change this behaviour using the Navigation pane of the Preferences.
Tip of the Day: Remember - folders are no different to text items. Deselect the corkboard or outliner to see or edit their textual contents.
Tip of the Day: You can switch between inches and centimetres as the ruler unit via the Text Editing pane of the Preferences.
Tip of the Day: RTF is almost always the best format to use for exporting to Word or other word processors.
Tip of the Day: File > Export > Files… will export selected documents, reproducing the binder structure as files and folders in the Finder.
Tip of the Day: To easily add diacritics, type Option+[e, u, n, or i], and then type the letter that should go beneath the chosen mark.
Tip of the Day: Holding down the Option key while clicking on the split button in the header bar will change the split type.
Tip of the Day: You can switch between the Modified and Created date in the inspector by clicking on the up/down arrows next to the date.
Tip of the Day: You can insert Scrivener Links into the notes pane in the inspector, as well as the main text.
Tip of the Day: Using the search field menu, you can search by label & then save your search - useful for tracking characters, for instance.
Tip of the Day: Use the synopsis fields to write your own brief descriptions of associated documents for the best results…
…(as opposed to relying on the synopses that are automatically filled by Scrivener after import, which use the first few lines of text).
Tip of the Day: You can hide the index card and general pane of the inspector by clicking on their title bars.
Tip of the Day: Hold down the green “Add” button in the toolbar for more options - to add a folder or import a web page.
Tip of the Day: Select multiple docs in the binder then enter full screen. Use cmd-[ and cmd-] to navigate between the selected docs in full screen.
Tip of the Day: With the main window on one screen and full screen on another, Opt-click items in the binder to switch docs in full screen.
Tip of the Day: Move the cursor to the bottom of the screen in full screen to show the control panel, or the top of the screen for menus.
Tip of the Day: You can use ctrl-cmd-left/right/up/down arrow to move documents around in the binder, outliner or corkboard.
Tip of the Day: Cmd-D will duplicate the selected documents (sort of an all-in-one copy-and-paste in one).
Tip of the Day: Select some text and hit shift-opt-cmd-T to set the title of the document using the selection.
Tip of the Day: Set up a blank project with your preferred keywords, labels etc & use Save As Template to use it as a base for new projects.
Tip of the Day: Use File > Backup Project To every day (preferably as soon as you open a project and just before you close it).
Tip of the Day: A curled corner to a document icon indicates that it has a snapshot associated with it.
Tip of the Day: You can convert web pages and PDF files to text files using Documents > Convert.
Tip of the Day: Ctrl-clicking on a multiple selection of documents allows you to assign a label or status to all of them at once.
Tip of the Day: To assign keywords to multiple documents, select the documents and drag & drop the keywords from the Keywords HUD onto them.
Tip of the Day: Hovering the mouse over an item in the binder will bring up its synopsis in a tooltip.
Tip of the Day: You can drag items from the binder into the editor header bar as another way of opening them.
Tip of the Day: You can drag supported file types from the references pane of the inspector to the editor header bar to view them.
Tip of the Day: You can drag supported file types from the Finder to the editor header bar to view them in Scrivener without importing them.
Tip of the Day: You can use the zoom pop-up in the footer bar to increase text size instead of making the font bigger.
Tip of the Day: While typing, hit cmd-period or shift-Escape to bring up the auto-complete list.
Tip of the Day: Click on the image of the three dots at the right of the outliner title bar to see a list of columns that can be added to the outliner.
Tip of the Day: Folders can be set to open in outline mode instead of corkboard mode by default using the Navigation Preferences pane.
Tip of the Day: Select several documents and hit opt-cmd-G to place them all inside a new folder.
Tip of the Day: Resize images in text by double-clicking on them to bring up the scale panel.
Tip of the Day: Window > Zoom to Fit Screen (ctrl-cmd-=) stretches the window to fit the screen.
Tip of the Day: You can insert images directly into the text by dragging or by using Edit > Insert > Image From File.
Tip of the Day: You can drag from the references table in the inspector to the header bar of the editor pane.
Tip of the Day: Status stamps can be displayed across index cards by selecting View > Index Cards > Show Stamps.
Tip of the Day: Set up the status list in File > Label & Status Setup…
Tip of the Day: If you accidentally hit the delete key and delete a document - do not worry! It has just moved to the Trash folder.
Tip of the Day: You can place icons in the status stamp by using a wingdings-style font: semigreenpenny.com/img/forum … 083618.jpg
Tip of the Day: Select text and hit shift-cmd-hyphen to strike it out.
Tip of the Day: Take a snapshot of your document before you start editing for the day, hit cmd-5, and you can return to your earlier version any time you want.
Tip of the Day: You can add project-specific words to the auto-complete list via Edit > Edit Auto-Complete List…
Tip of the Day: You can drag supported files from the Finder to the editor header bar in Scrivener for just viewing images, PDF files etc in Scriv without importing.
Tip of the Day: Hit cmd-R in an editor to bring up the ruler.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener imports OPML, so you can export from OmniOutliner as OPML and import your outline into Scrivener.
Tip of the Day: You can use the Text > Scriptwriting > Script Settings even if you are not a scriptwriter, to set up your own custom formatting.
Tip of the Day: Text Editing preferences affect new documents. Use Documents > Convert > to Default Style to update the formatting of selected existing documents.
Tip of the Day: Enter or leave script mode by hitting cmd-3 or by going to Text > Scriptwriting > Script Mode.
Tip of the Day: Individual document remember whether they are in script or prose mode.
Tip of the Day: When viewing images, double-click on the image to bring up the image scaling and rotation panel.
Tip of the Day: Hold down the green “Add” button in the toolbar for more options - to add a folder or import a web page.
Tip of the Day: Using the full screen preferences, you can set up full screen to look like a retro computer (e.g green on black).
Tip of the Day: View > Index Cards > Cards Across lets you set how many index cards should be laid out across the corkboard view before wrapping.
Tip of the Day: If you are in scriptwriting mode, new documents are created in scriptwriting mode automatically.
Tip of the Day: To use one of Final Draft’s script formats, choose “Load from Final Draft FDX file…” in the Manage… button at the bottom of the Text > Script Writing > Script Settings panel, and select a FD8 file from which you want to read the formatting.
Tip of the Day: The “Pages (paperback)” stats inView > Statistics > Project Statistics count pages as 6 characters (5 characters + a space) = 1 word, and you set words-per-page in the options. This gives a good rule of thumb idea of how long the trade paperback may be.
Tip of the Day: View > Editor > Zoom In/Zoom Out (opt-cmd-up and opt-cmd-down) zooms in and out on text documents, PDF documents and web pages.
Tip of the Day: To check for overused words, select the documents you want to check, enter Edit Scrivenings mode, and go to View > Statistics > Text Statistics. Click on the disclosure triangle next to “Word Frequency” to reveal the word frequency.
Tip of the Day: The lock button at the bottom-right of the inspector allows you to lock the inspector to the current editor (i.e. if you click in the split view, the inspector won’t update and will carry on showing information for the editor to which it is locked).
Tip of the Day: Opt-click on the split icon in the header view of an editor to change the split type.
Tip of the Day: When typing keywords in the keywords pane of the inspector, after you start typing hit opt-Escape to bring up the list of keywords for auto-completion.
Tip of the Day: You can create folders at the root level alongside the Draft and Research folders - so you can add folders for “Characters”, “Locations”, etc.
Tip of the Day: You can drag documents from the binder to the editor header bar as another way of opening them.
Tip of the Day: Click on the triangle next to the magnifying glass in the toolbar search field to narrow down the search criteria.
Tip of the Day: File > Export > Files… exports selected files in the binder recreating the folder structure in the Finder.
Tip of the Day: Hover the mouse over documents in the binder to see the synopsis in a tooltip.
Tip of the Day: Opt-clicking on one of the checkbox columns in the Outliner will apply to all visible items (e.g. If you opt-click on the “Page Break Before” checkbox of a document in the outliner, if it was off and clicking on it turns it on, the checkbox will be set to ON for all visible items in the Outliner too).
Tip of the Day: While working in another application, you can use Scrivener’s services to send text to the currently open Scrivener project. (You will need to enable Scrivener services in the System Preferences in Snow Leopard. To do so, you go to Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts in System Preferences, choose “Services”, and look for “Append to Current Text” and “Make New Clipping” under the “Text” section.)
Tip of the Day: To get a word and character count for selected text, ctrl-click on the selection; selection statistics appear at the bottom of the contextual menu.
Tip of the Day: To save your preferences to restore them later, use the “Manage…” pop-up button at the bottom of the Scrivener > Preferences… window.
Tip of the Day: To assign keywords to multiple documents at the same time, select the relevant documents and drag & drop the keywords onto one of them in the Binder from the Keywords HUD.
Tip of the Day: File > Backup Project To… allows you to create zipped-up backups of your project.
Tip of the Day: RTF is by far the best export format. To export with footnotes, images, headers and comments intact, choose RTF.
Tip of the Day: To split up text after importing, use Documents > Split at Selection (cmd-K) or Split with Selection as Title (opt-cmd-K).
Tip of the Day: Preferences only affect text formatting for new documents. For existing documents, use Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style.
Tip of the Day: To copy whole documents, use Documents > Duplicate (cmd-D). Or use Simple Duplicate (shift-cmd-D), which won’t copy subdocuments.
Tip of the Day: Remain calm. If you accidentally hit delete on a file, the file is not permanently deleted, just moved to Scrivener’s Trash folder. 
Tip of the Day: To switch between project and document notes, click Document Notes in the Inspector. Project notes can be viewed by any document.
Tip of the Day: If you want to give text highlight colours meaningful names for your project, use the panel found here Edit > Find > Find Highlight…
Tip of the Day: To change the colour of an annotation (Text > Annotation), click into the annotation and use Text > Font > Show Colors.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener Links (Text > Scrivener Link, or drag documents into text) allow you to make links between documents in a project. See our video literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html ‘References & Links’ for more information.
Tip of the Day: Holding the Option key down while dragging in the binder/outliner will disallow drop-ons, making dropping between documents easier.
Tip of the Day: View > Reveal in Binder (opt-cmd-R) will show where the current editor document is in the binder.
Tip of the Day: Documents > Convert allows you to convert PDF or web files into text files for editing (some formatting may be lost).
Tip of the Day: Opt-cmd-up/down arrow zooms in/out on text, PDF and web files.
Tip of the Day: If you do not want to include formatting when pasting text, just use Edit > Paste and Match Style (shift-opt-cmd-V).
Tip of the Day: Window > Zoom to Fit Screen (ctrl-cmd-=) stretches the window to fit the screen.
Tip of the Day: To highlight a PDF: View > Open in > External Editor to highlight the PDF in Preview/Acrobat/Skim. Switch from the PDF document and back to see the changes.
Tip of the Day: You can make Scrivener’s interface sparse by changing background colours to white, hiding the toolbar and header bars, closing the inspector, etc.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener supports MultiMarkdown (MMD). MMD is a simple mark-up syntax that can be converted into LaTeX and XHTML.
Tip of the Day: Control-clicking on the icon next to the project file name at the top centre of the header bar brings up the file path.
Tip of the Day: Take a snapshot of your document before you start editing for the day, hit cmd-5 or Documents > Snapshots > Take Snapshot, and you can return to your earlier version of the document at any time that you want.
Tip of the Day: Set up a blank project with your preferred keywords, labels, font, colours, etc and use File > Save As Template… to use it as a base for new projects.
Tip of the Day: To save your preferences in order to restore them later, use the “Manage…” pop-up button at the bottom of the Scrivener > Preferences… window.
Tip of the Day: Text > Ghost Notes Mode (shift-cmd-X) fades out unselected annotations and footnotes. Great for making them less obtrusive.
Tip of the Day: Preference settings only affect text formatting for new documents. For existing documents, use Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style.
Tip of the Day: To alter line height, inter-line spacing and paragraph spacing of selected text go to Text > Spacing…
Tip of the Day: Make sure files have extensions before importing them into Scrivener, e.g. RTF. Scrivener uses the extension to determine the file type.
Tip of the Day: When the editor is split either horizontally or vertically, the pane that is active displays an underline in the document title of the relevant header bar.
Tip of the Day: To print your entire draft, go to File > Compile Draft… and click on the “Print…” button instead of “Export…”.
Tip of the Day: Edit > Find > Find Annotation… allows you to cycle through all annotations in a project.
Tip of the Day: The little arrow next to the magnifying glass in the toolbar search field allows you to change the search parameters.
Tip of the Day: You can set up full screen mode to look like an old-fashioned computer by playing with Scrivener > Preferences… > Full Screen. ‘Setting Up Your Writing Environment’ tutorial video available here literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: Project Targets allow you to set a word/character count target for the entire draft, and for each writing session. The ‘Targets’ video gives more information literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: If you would like to change the organisation of your Scrivener toolbar, go to View > Customize Toolbar…
Tip of the Day: To see where a project is saved, ctrl-click on the .scriv icon next to the project name at the very top of the window, above the toolbar line.
Tip of the Day: New documents use the current mode. If in script mode, new documents will use script mode. Text > Scriptwriting > Script Mode or cmd-3 will switch between script and prose writing modes.
Tip of the Day: Folders and text files are much the same. To see the text of a folder, click on the corkboard icon. Please see ‘The Flexibility of Folders in Scrivener’ tutorial video literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html for more details.
Tip of the Day: Command-r (cmd-r) will quickly show or hide the ruler.
Tip of the Day: You can customise the separators that appear between texts in Edit Scrivenings via Preferences… > General.
Tip of the Day: You can get rid of the lines from index cards using Scrivener > Preferences… > Fonts & Colors > Draw lines.
Tip of the Day: Entering <$p> in the header/footer field in File > Compile Draft… > Text Options will insert the page number in the compiled file.
Tip of the Day: You can insert images directly into the text by dragging or by using Edit > Insert > Image From File… Double-click on the image to resize.
Tip of the Day: To enter line breaks into synopses when editing in corkboard or outliner mode, use opt-return instead of just return.
Tip of the Day: Edit Scrivenings allows you to work on multiple text documents as though they were one, even inside the Research folder.
Tip of the Day: If you prefer the Outliner to the Corkboard, go to Scrivener > Preferences… > Navigation tab to choose which mode gets opened by default.
Tip of the Day: To give highlight colours meaningful names (e.g. event related), use the panel from Edit > Find > Find Highlight… or press ctrl-cmd-H.
Tip of the Day: To get a word count for selected text, ctrl-click on the selection; the count appears at the bottom of the contextual menu. Plenty of count related information in our video on ‘Statistics’ literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: To assign a label or status to multiple documents, ctrl-click on the selected documents in the binder, corkboard or outliner.
Tip of the Day: Set up your own list of labels and status descriptions by going to File > Label & Status Setup… or by pressing alt-cmd-,
Tip of the Day: You can hide or show the header and footer bars in the editor pane(s) using View > Layout > Hide/Show Header/Footer View.
Tip of the Day: Hit cmd-. or opt-esc while typing to bring up the auto-complete list. Add auto-complete words to a Scrivener project via the Edit > Edit Auto-Complete List… menu item.
Tip of the Day: You can customise all keyboard shortcuts in Scrivener and other Cocoa programs via System Preferences: literatureandlatte.com/wiki/ … _Shortcuts
Tip of the Day: The two arrows (if activated - the icon goes blue when clicked) in the footer bar beneath the outliner and corkboard (when you are in the relevant mode) make the other editor (when opened) show the selected document. It is simple when you try!
Tip of the Day: Use the References pane in the Inspector (or press cmd-7) to create links to external files that you do not want to import into the project. You can see our ‘References & Links’ video for more information literatureandlatte.com/videos/index.html
Tip of the Day: You can give the corkboard a custom background image or a plain colour background via Scrivener > Preferences… > Fonts & Colors tab > Corkboard background:
Tip of the Day: You can add additional columns in the Outliner view by clicking the 3 dots (…) at the right of the existing columns. The likes of ‘Word Count’ and ‘Target’ information are then only a further click away.
Tip of the Day: To exit a search, either click on the ‘X’ at the right of search term field, or the ‘X’ in the footer bar of the binder.
Tip of the Day: The Formatting tab in File > Compile Draft… lets you choose how the text of your exported manuscript should appear. It doesn’t have to look anything like it does in Scrivener’s editor, if you do not want it to.
Tip of the Day: To make individual documents retain their format when using File > Compile Draft… (e.g. title pages), check Preserve Formatting in the Inspector.
Tip of the Day: Create custom project templates by setting up a bare bones project with settings you want and using File > Save As Template…
Tip of the Day: Switch between project and document notes by clicking on the Notes tab in the Inspector, then clicking on Document Notes. Project Notes can be viewed by any document.
Tip of the Day: Going to View > Customize Toolbar… provides a way for you to drag your favourite items to (or default reset) the toolbar.
Tip of the Day: Do not worry about the size of a Scrivener project in terms of disk space, or how many files you can put into it.
Tip of the Day: The default save location for Scrivener projects is your Documents folder. Cmd-click on the title bar (top of window) to see a file’s location.
Tip of the Day: Setting up Compile Draft correctly will allow you to print out a list of all the titles in your draft, including any synopsis or notes you may wish to include. literatureandlatte.com/wiki/ … d_draft.3F
Tip of the Day: Do not be concerned with proprietary formats. You should always (for the foreseeable future) be able to get your writing out of Scrivener using an RTF or HTML export.
Tip of the Day: A list of readily available Scrivener keyboard shortcuts, with a link to creating your own custom shortcuts literatureandlatte.com/wiki/ … _Shortcuts
Tip of the Day: You can change the language of the spell checker supporting Scrivener literatureandlatte.com/wiki/ … Dictionary
Tip of the Day: Edit Scrivenings allows you to edit multiple text documents as though they were one long document. This way, you can write in small chunks and then combine them in any way you like to see how they work together.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener allows you to create templates from your projects and to share them with others if you wish. ~/Library/Application Support/Scrivener/ProjectTemplates
Tip of the Day: Every document in Scrivener can have an associated synopsis. In the Inspector, as in the Corkboard view, the synopsis is displayed as the text of an index card (which is
already a familiar way of storing synopses for many writers).
Tip of the Day: Full Screen mode allows you to edit your text in a distraction-free environment. You can view any text document or Edit Scrivenings session.
Tip of the Day: Edit > Edit Auto-Complete List… brings up a panel which allows you to add words to the auto-complete list for the current project. Great for character names, locations, or often recurring technical terms. Hit cmd-period or opt-escape when one or more characters of a word in the list have been typed to call on the feature.
Tip of the Day: You can double-click on the icon in the top-left of index cards in Corkboard mode and in the ‘Type’ column of Outliner rows to navigate into the relevant document.
Tip of the Day: Use Text > Scrivener Link to create hyperlinks within text documents or notes that point to other documents within the project.
Tip of the Day: Activating Text > Scriptwriting > Script Mode - Screenplay will turn Scrivener’s editor with focus into a place where you could possibly write the treatment or complete script for next year’s big stage or screen hit!
Tip of the Day: You can easily save a search by clicking ‘Save Search…’ at the bottom of the search menu. This will add the search criteria as a purple folder with a magnifying glass at the bottom of your Binder. Simply double-click the folder to run the search again. You can have as many saved searches as you wish.
Tip of the Day: Holding down the Option key whilst dragging in Outliner mode will disallow “Drop Ons”, making it easier to target between documents. This is very useful if you are rearranging a set of documents at the same level and want to avoid dropping them into one another.
Tip of the Day: The text editor in Scrivener uses the standard OS X ruler, which can be shown or hidden via Text > Ruler > Show Ruler or by hitting cmd-R.
Tip of the Day: To define your own styles, choose Styles > Other (in the ruler; cmd-R) to open the style editor. Navigate back and forth through the styles of your document or styles already saved. Click Select to select all ranges of text in the document that have the displayed style; click Apply to apply the style to selected text. To add a style from your document to the favourites, click Add To Favorites.
Tip of the Day: Drag and drop a document icon from the Binder, Outliner or Corkboard to create a Scrivener link to that document in the text (so that clicking the link will open the document). If the document is an image document, however, the image itself will get placed inside the text; to create a Scrivener link from a dragged image document, hold down the Option key whilst dragging and dropping it into the text.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener > Preferences… > General > Default Editor Width; the value you enter here will determine the width of the main editor pane after a zoom. Scrivener has a “smart zoom” feature whereby, when you click on “zoom” (either in the Window menu or by clicking on the green traffic light button in the top-left of the window), Scrivener will try to size the window to best fit the current visible elements.
Tip of the Day: Double-clicking on an image in the Editor will display the Image Tools HUD. You can then use the tools to rescale or rotate your image.
Tip of the Day: If typographer’s quotes are turned on (Scrivener > Preferences… > Typography), all speech marks and apostrophes get transformed into curly quotes instead of straight ones. You can toggle between curly and straight quotes by selecting a speech mark or apostrophe character and re-typing the speech mark or apostrophe.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener > Preferences… > General allows you to set a bibliography or citations manager such as Bookends, EndNote or Sente for academic work. Click on ‘Choose…’ to select your citations manager (usually from the Applications folder). If you set a citations manager here, you can hit shift-cmd-Y (or select Text > Bibliography/Citations…) to launch your bibliography application and bring it to the front automatically. You can then use your bibliography/citations application to paste a citation into Scrivener.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener automatically saves changes made to projects. If the user makes no edits for two seconds, Scrivener deems it a good time to auto-save without the process interrupting the user. Scrivener > Preferences… > General allows you can change the period Scrivener waits to auto-save.
Tip of the Day: By default, the “paper” colour in Full Screen mode is a pinkish-grey (to be easy on the eyes), and the text colour will be whatever you are using for the main document. You can change this via the Scrivener > Preferences… > Full Screen, so that you could even have a retro green text on black if you wanted!
Tip of the Day: If ‘Automatically show completions’ is checked in Scrivener > Preferences… > Text Editing, when in Scriptwriting mode, any auto-completions you have set in the ‘Script Settings…’ panel will pop-up automatically when you pause from typing.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener’s RTF importer supports footnotes, annotations and most images. To get Word documents with such features into Scrivener, first save them as RTF in Word and then import them into Scrivener in RTF format rather than DOC format.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener 2.0 will offer a plethora of choice when printing index cards or your project outline, but to currently print a synopsis of your work, use File > Compile Draft… and choose to include titles and synopses only.
Tip of the Day: File > Compile Draft… > Text Options > Convert italics to underlines is useful if you use italics for emphasis but want to export or print using the standard manuscript format in which emphasis is indicated by underlined text.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener > Preferences… > Fonts & Colors lets you customise the Corkboard background. Select “Corkboard pattern” to use the default Corkboard background; “Custom color” allows you to choose a background colour from the colour panel on the right of the pop-up button; “Custom background…” lets you select an image file from disk to use as the background image.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener comes with a number of templates via the Extras Installer, and you can easily create you own with File > Save As Template…
Tip of the Day: If ‘Use block insertion point’ is checked within Scrivener > Preferences… > Full Screen, the insertion point in the text will appear as an old-fashioned block - the sort popular circa 1980 (or in Terminal).
Tip of the Day: Not much of a tip if you’re already using Scrivener, but the application trial runs for 30 days of actual use. If you use it every day it lasts 30 days; if you use it only two days a week, it lasts fifteen weeks. Once the trial expires, you can export all of your work or buy a licence to continue using Scrivener.
Tip of the Day: Additional meta-data columns can be added to your Outliner view by pressing ‘…’ Sorting options galore are coming with Scrivener 2.0!
Tip of the Day: Users who prefer plain text may wish to set their default font and paragraph settings in Scrivener > Preferences… > Text Editing to something that emulates a plain text “feel”. For instance, you could set the font to Monaco 10-point (Monaco does not draw bold or
italics) and set the paragraph formatting so that there are no indents and no inter-line spacing.
Tip of the Day: View > Editor > Lock in Place locks the editor so that selections made in the binder will not change what is being viewed in the editor. When activated, the header view changes colour to indicate that the editor is currently locked in place.
Tip of the Day: You can check that you are running the latest version of Scrivener by going to Scrivener > Check for Updates… The current version is 1.54.
Tip of the Day: When you delete a file in Scrivener (by hitting the “Delete” key or by clicking on the “Delete” toolbar item), it is not irretrievably deleted. Instead, it is sent to the Trash folder in the binder, and there it will stay until the trash is emptied.
Tip of the Day: If you don’t like the alternating grey colour employed by Edit Scrivenings, you can change it via Scrivener > Preferences… > Fonts & Colors > Alternate scrivenings.
Tip of the Day: Use ‘Preserve Formatting’ in the Inspector to preserve the way a document looks in Scrivener’s editor when using File > Compile Draft… This is useful for chunks of text that require special formatting, such as letters or title pages.
Tip of the Day: When a search is performed (using either Edit > Find > Project Search… or the toolbar search), the binder is replaced with the search results table.
Tip of the Day: We have tutorial videos available in HD on YouTube youtube.com/. Search for ‘Scrivener Basics’. More videos will be uploaded soon-ish, revealing some Scrivener 2.0 features.
Tip of the Day: File > Import > Web Page… (or Add Web Page directly from the toolbar) lets you enter the URL of a web page that you would like to import into Scrivener. The web page will be imported as a web archive into the Research area of a Scrivener project. You can convert it to a text file afterwards by using Documents > Convert > Web Archive to Text should you wish to edit the file in your Draft area).
Tip of the Day: Use the “Templates…” pop-up button at the bottom of the assistant window from File > New Project… to import templates created by other users, and to export your own templates for sharing. Selecting “Select Current by Default” from the pop-up menu will cause the currently selected template to be selected every time that you go to create a new project.
Tip of the Day: Edit > Paste and Match Style (or shift-option-cmd-V) pastes the contents of the clipboard without any of its existing fonts and styles. Useful for when you have copied a range of formatted text but want to paste it using the style of the text into which you are placing it.
Tip of the Day: Documents > Merge will combine multiple selected documents in the binder, outliner or corkboard into one document. Text, synopses and notes are all combined into a merged text, synopsis and notes text respectively. The title, and meta-data such as label and status, are taken from the first selected document.
Tip of the Day: You can assign keywords to a document by dragging them from the Keywords HUD (Window > Show Keywords HUD) directly into the header view of the relevant document.
Tip of the Day: To resize an image within Scrivener, double-click on it. This will bring up the image scaling panel.
Tip of the Day: To analyse word frequency for the whole of your draft, select the Draft in the binder and enter an Edit Scrivenings session. Ensure that the editor has focus and go to View > Statistics > Text Statistics.
Tip of the Day: Goal oriented tools. Try clicking on the little “target” icon in the footer bar. You can set a goal for each document and when you get to that point, the colour of the target icon will change to green, letting you know you’ve surpassed the goal.
Tip of the Day: If Text > Typewriter Scrolling (or ctrl-cmd-T) is checked, the currently edited line will be vertically centred on the screen, much as it would be on a typewriter. If you find yourself suddenly jumping to the centre of the screen in Full Screen mode or the regular editor, this setting is the culprit.
Tip of the Day: You can completely reformat the text on export or for printing without affecting the original. Thus making it easy to export a manuscript in a format suitable for an editor, and then export it just as easily in a format more suited to publishing on the internet.
Tip of the Day: Self-indulgent tip requesting that you read the following blog post: literatureandlatte.com/blog/?p=133. Relates to the upcoming feature-set and release of Scrivener 2.0!
Tip of the Day: Tip of the Day: You can save a search by choosing “Save Search…” from the bottom of the search menu. When you close the search, after naming, you will find a purple folder at the bottom of the binder. Double-clicking on this folder will automatically re-run the search, filling in the search field with the saved search term and setting the appropriate options. You can have as many saved searches as you want.
Tip of the Day: The Statistics submenu (View > Statistics) allows you to gather information about the word and character counts of both individual documents and the project as a whole. The following video tutorial provides pertinent details literatureandlatte.com/video … ouTube.mov.
Tip of the Day: You can use the Highlights Finder panel in Edit > Find > Find Highlight… to give highlight colours meaningful names.
Tip of the Day: In order to highlight a PDF in Scrivener 1.x use View > Open in > External Editor to highlight the PDF document using Preview, Acrobat, Skim, et cetera. Save the changes. In Scrivener’s binder, switch to another document and then back again in order to see the highlights. This will be easier to achieve in Scrivener 2.0.
Tip of the Day: To split up text after importing, use Documents > Split at Selection (cmd-K) or Split with Selection as Title (option-cmd-K).
Tip of the Day: To assign keywords to multiple documents at the same time, select the relevant documents in the binder and then drag and drop the keywords onto one of them from the keywords HUD (Window > Show Keywords HUD).
Tip of the Day: Preferences only affect text formatting for new documents. For existing documents, use Documents > Convert > Formatting to Default Text Style.
Tip of the Day: To enter line breaks into synopses when editing in the corkboard or outliner, use Opt-return instead of just return.
Tip of the Day: Hold down the green “Add” button in the toolbar for more options. You can then add a folder or import a web page.
Tip of the Day: Entering <$p> in the header/footer field in File > Compile Draft… > Text Options will insert the page number into a compiled file.
Tip of the Day: RTF is by far the best export format. To export with footnotes, images, headers and comments intact, choose RTF.
Tip of the Day: You can convert a text file into a folder and vice versa via Documents > Convert > to File / to Folder.
Tip of the Day: To generate a synopsis from the current text selection, click on the button above the index card in the inspector.
Tip of the Day: To switch between project and document notes, click on ‘Document Notes’ in the Inspector (cmd-6 to get into the correct Inspector mode). Project notes can be viewed by any document.
Tip of the Day: Clicking on the icon next to the document title in the editor header bar brings up a menu that can be useful on occasion! Those occasions involving navigation, taking snapshots, locking the document in place, et cetera…
Tip of the Day: When the editor is split, the pane that is active displays an underline in the document title in its header bar.
Tip of the Day: Move the cursor to the bottom of the screen whilst in full screen mode to show the control panel, or the top of the screen for Scrivener menus.
Tip of the Day: To prevent the binder changing documents in a particular editor, use Lock in Place (opt-cmd-L); the header bar turns pink.
Tip of the Day: To create your own scriptwriting formats, use Text > Scriptwriting > Script Settings… Useful for custom formatting too.
Tip of the Day: Select multiple documents in the binder then enter full screen. You can use cmd-[ and cmd-] to navigate through the selected documents in full screen mode.
Tip of the Day: Prefer the Outliner to the Corkboard? Scrivener > Preferences… > Navigation tab allows you to choose which mode gets opened by default.
Tip of the Day: You can adjust the shadow on corkboard cards by moving the slider in the Fonts & Colors tab in Scrivener > Preferences…
Tip of the Day: Scrivener supports MultiMarkdown (MMD). MMD is a simple mark-up syntax that can be converted into LaTeX and XHTML.
Tip of the Day: Command-r (cmd-r) will quickly show or hide the ruler.
Tip of the Day: To strike through text, select it and hit shift-cmd-hyphen.
Tip of the Day: Shift-cmd-H highlights text using the last selected highlight colour.
Tip of the Day: Going to View > Customize Toolbar… provides a way for you to drag your favourite items to (or default reset) the toolbar.
Tip of the Day: Press the spacebar on supported documents in the binder to launch Quick Reference Windows youtube.com/watch?v=5k5BN1nc2KQ
Tip of the Day: While away some time in Edit > Writing Tools > Name Generator… P.S. Tick ‘Attempt alliteration’ and ramp up the ‘Obscurity Level’ if you’re just playing!
Tip of the Day: Comprehensive 300+ page PDF user manual is available in Scrivener 2.0 via Help > Scrivener Manual.
Tip of the Day: Searching for a synonym or definition? Try pressing ctrl-cmd-D whilst floating over the offending word.
Tip of the Day: To jump to the beginning or end of a section in a long Scrivenings session, you can quickly select the entire section with opt-cmd-A, then use the left or right arrow to jump to the beginning or end of the document.
Tip of the Day: Enjoy cooking? Check out the ‘Recipe Collection’ project template stored under File > New Project… > Miscellaneous.
Tip of the Day: Columns in outliner view can be sorted top to bottom, bottom to top, or unsorted by pressing the relevant column title header.
Tip of the Day: Use Documents > Favorites > Add to Favorites if you have a document within a project that you often want to link or refer to. It will become available in contextual menus.
Tip of the Day: To enter line breaks into synopses when editing in the corkboard or outliner, use Opt-return instead of just return.
Tip of the Day: When editing your documents in Scrivener 2.0, you can use Format > Revision Mode bit.ly/hW0Afv
Tip of the Day: Go to Help > Placeholder Tags List… within Scrivener 2 to see all the available tag variables.
Tip of the Day: If you are planning on exporting your work to an eBook, you may find this Scrivener tutorial video helpful bit.ly/byqpvq
Tip of the Day: When transcribing video or audio files, activate the pause and rewind button (lower right in editor window - it will turn blue) to automatically rewind a set number of seconds when pause is pressed. The rewind duration can be set under Scrivener > Preferences… > Navigation.
Tip of the Day: If you like looking at a page whilst writing, go to View > Page View > Show Page View in Scrivener 2: bit.ly/eEkKZ9.
Tip of the Day: You can personalise your Full Screen view by going to View > Full Screen Backdrop and choosing an image: youtube.com/watch?v=lsHBcZqWtMw
Tip of the Day: Select a document or folder in the binder and use Documents > Change Icon in Scrivener 2 to better organise your binder.
Tip of the Day: Use opt-cmd-P to bring up your Project Notes notepad. Any notes written will be available from the project notes area of your inspector.
Tip of the Day: Use your Scratch Pad (Window > Show Scratch Pad) to store multiple notes. You can then send them to any of your Scrivener projects by using the Send to Project… menu.
Tip of the Day: Do you want Scrivener to take foreground precedence in your screen real-estate? You can simply use Window > Float Window to keep it on top. 
Tip of the Day: Don’t like your fingers leaving your keyboard when using Scrivener 2, please find our keyboard shortcuts here literatureandlatte.com/wiki/ … _reference
Tip of the Day: Searching for a synonym or definition? Try pressing ctrl-cmd-D whilst floating over the offending word in a Scrivener project.
Tip of the Day: To strike through text, select it in the editor and hit shift-cmd-hyphen.
Tip of the Day: To prevent the binder changing documents in a particular editor, use Lock in Place (opt-cmd-L); the header bar turns pink.
Tip of the Day: To resize an image within Scrivener, double-click on it in the editor. This will bring up the image tools panel.
Tip of the Day: To create your own scriptwriting formats, use Format > Scriptwriting > Script Settings… Useful for custom formatting too.
Tip of the Day: Press the spacebar on supported documents in the binder to launch Quick Reference Windows youtube.com/watch?v=5k5BN1nc2KQ
Tip of the Day: Move the cursor to the bottom of the screen whilst in full screen mode to show the control panel, or the top of the screen for Scrivener menus.
Tip of the Day: To split up text after importing, use Documents > Split at Selection (cmd-K) or Split with Selection as Title (option-cmd-K).
Tip of the Day: You can convert a text file into a folder and vice versa via Documents > Convert > to File / to Folder.
Tip of the Day: Scrivener allows you to create templates from your projects and to share them with others if you wish. ~/Library/Application Support/Scrivener/ProjectTemplates
Tip of the Day: You can check that you are running the latest version of Scrivener by going to Scrivener > Check for Updates… The current version is 2.0.5, with 2.1 coming soon!
Tip of the Day: Documents > Convert allows you to convert PDF or web files into text files for editing (some formatting may be lost).
