I and another Windows user (somebody) posted in the forum that we can’t actually see any content in the tutorial. The headings all show up on the left-hand side but there is no ‘interaction’ and no content when any of the headings are selected. I’ve watched the tutorial videos, but I’d still like to do the walk through…
Yes, I’ve seen a couple users report this–I assume this is what’s happening when you first create a tutorial project from either the Help menu or the Getting Started section of the New Project window? Sorry it’s not opening properly! We’re still working on figuring out why this isn’t copying for some users correctly, but I’ve attached a zipped copy of the tutorial project here for you to download in the meanwhile. Right-click to unzip the project, and then you can move the Tutorial.scriv inside to your Documents folder or wherever you’d like to keep it. Hopefully that will open properly for you, but let me know if it does not. Could you also let me know if you’re getting any error messages when opening the initial copy of the tutorial–e.g. something saying that Scrivener can’t load the documents due to an RTF parsing error or such?
ScrivenerTutorial.scriv.zip (1.86 MB)
I noticed that this problem was addressed in Jan 2012; am wondering if anything was EVER done about it because I, too, cannot view the initial tutorial heralded in the ‘before you do anything else’ realm.
I did NOT download the link listed in the forum from “MM” as this is almost two years beyond the initial complaint and, surely, an update or something has been discovered.
Would like to find and use this tutorial (the initial one we are encouraged to view before starting ANYTHING) before the end of the trial period; and truly before the end of this day, as I only have 30-days to evaluate this much touted program and would like to spend my time effectively discovering its value rather than grumpily wrinkling my nose and deleting it before it has a chance.
Hoping someone out there is still working on this problem and there exists a solution.
Thank you,
~khrys…
I’m a Mac user and things may be different on Windows, but the tutorial is found under the “Help” menu on Mac and I would think that is where it could be found. Or if you open a new Scrivener project, you should be presented with a screen with all the built in templates. At the top is a section “Getting Started” containing the Tutorial, the User Manual, and a link to the online video tutorials. I presume it’s the same on Windows.
Secondly, do note, your 30 days on which you start Scrivener, not 30 calendar days, so if you open it when you download it and having shut down, then not have time to work with it, when you do start it up again you still have 29 days.
Mr X
We’ve only ever had a few users report this problem and generally they can’t reproduce it, so unfortunately we’ve never had enough information to ascertain what is causing the problem, as it seems likely related to the system settings. All Scrivener does when you choose to create the tutorial is send the command to create a copy of the tutorial project included in the installation folder, saving it at the name and location you supply. In these few cases, the copy is incomplete, thus the files appear blank when you’re viewing them.
In most cases, redoing the copy seems to work, so you can try just deleting the tutorial project you created and then reselecting the tutorial from the New Project window or the Help window. To delete the project, just locate the .scriv folder in Windows Explorer and delete it. The default would be to save it in Documents, so e.g. if you saved it as “Tutorial” you would select and delete the “Tutorial.scriv” folder within your user Documents folder. Then go to Scrivener and select the interactive tutorial from the Getting Started category in the new project window. You’ll go through the same process as before, choosing a location to save it and giving it a name, and then the newly copied tutorial will open.
If that doesn’t fix the problem and the tutorial is still blank, you can trash it and just copy the tutorial project yourself by going to the Scrivener installation folder, e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\Scrivener, and right-clicking the “Tutorial.scriv” folder there to copy it, then pasting it wherever you want to save the project, e.g. your Documents folder. Once you’ve pasted it, double-click to open the folder and then double-click the “project” file inside to open it in Scrivener.
I am not pleased that I have to do a ‘work-around’ to make the tutorial function, and I do not even know what is causing it to fail or if it will function if I follow those steps outlined above.
The more I read and learn of this program, I do not believe 30-days is an adequate period in which to evaluate its usefulness. I have spent a full day simply trying to get the tutorial to operate to LEARN the program and I’m still no closer.
I will give it one further opportunity to wow me (and I’m a pretty simple person) because, beyond that, I simply don’t have time to worry about a program not functioning or being too hard to operate.
Crossing my fingers, because if the tutorial does not work this try, I am out of days to take the time to learn the program.
~khrys…