Unable to access tutorial plus importing from Pages

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
1

I have downloaded the NaNoWri Mo 2009 trial offer and have watched the videos but when I try to access the interactive tutorial in the Help menu it won’t save to disk and so I can’t access it.

Also I can cut and paste my work into Scrivner but can’t import my .pages What’s the go?

thanks

Mary-Lou

2

After downloading and opening the dmg file, did you copy Scrivener to your hard drive?

Which version of Mac OS X are you using?

-'Dee

3

.pages is a proprietary format that Apple hasn’t made public and hasn’t released a translator for, so no other word processor can import or open .pages files. The answer is to open the files in Pages and export them as .rtf, which Scrivener will import.

Welcome to the forum, Mary-Lou :slight_smile:

Mark

4

Scrivener is on the hard drive and I’m using version 10.6.1

5

Thanks for the welcome Mark. I’ve imported using rtf and I’m having a play. It’s fun! But I would like to use the interactive tutorial. Still no luck with that one.

ML

6

So you’re sure you’re running Scrivener from your hard disk and not the dmg?

7

Just checked with the IT expert in the house and I’m definitely running it off the hard drive.

ML

8

thinks Have you tried navigating to the tutorial from the Finder and opening it from there? It’s a Scrivener project.

-'Dee

9

Hmmm. All I can find is the Scrivener app. not the tutorial. I’ve done a search in finder and in the hard drive for tutorial but nothing comes up.

I’ve started using Scrivener and it all seems to be working - but I’m still unable to save the tutorial to disk and so can’t use it.

ML

10

I’m not at home, so I can’t walk through this on my Mac. :neutral_face:

Have you installed the “Extras” from the dmg along with Scrivener?

11

Yep I installed the extras, got the NaNoWriMo template happening so that’s all good.

If I trash the version I’ve installed and re-install will I lose the work I’ve already done in Scrivener? I know it’s saved as a .scriv in my documents, will the new installed version find that and use it automatically?

ta

ML

12

Hi Mary-Lou,

Thanks for trying Scrivener. What error are you receiving when you try to use the tutorial? There is a known bug which means that the tutorial won’t save if you are not using the main (admin) account on the computer. Here is the workaround:

  1. In the Finder, find Scrivener (most likely in your Applications folder).
  2. Ctrl-click on it and select “Show Package Contents”.
  3. Drill down into the Contents and then Resources folders. Inside the Resources folder, there are lots of files. Find the one labelled in purple entitled Tutorial.scriv, and copy and paste it to another folder, such as your ~/Documents folder.
  4. Open the tutorial project you just copied in your Documents folder.

When Scrivener goes to save the tutorial project, all it does is make a copy in the same way as above. However, when not using the admin account, for some reason OS X refuses to allow it to copy in this way. I have it on my list to find out how to fix this, but the above should get you up and running in the mean time.

Hope that helps!
All the best,
Keith

13

Yay!!! That’s got it working. Thank you so much. We have three Macs in the house (and only two of us - we love them) and there is an admin account so that explains why I couldn’t access it direct.

I was worried about doing to much work in Scrivener incase I’d done something horribly wrong and would lose the lot. But now I can proceed with confidence. Loving it so far.

At the end of NaNoWriMo when we all buy the software does all our fabulous writing transfer automatically to the bought version?

thanks again

ML

14

Your writing will still be on your harddrive as a project. Yes, it’ll still be accessible when you update your program with a serial code from buying it. :mrgreen:

Sorry I wasn’t more help, but I’m glad Keith knew what was going on!

-'Dee

15

Thanks Dee, I appreciated your attempt to help. Now we both know what’s going on with the recalcitrant tutorial!

ML