Unable to edit Sample Document

Using to write a Fiction Novel.

Section titled “Research”

There is a sample document titled “Sample Story MS”

It will not let me edit this, even if I copy it. This is frustrating.

You can’t edit it because it’s a PDF file. It’s only there to show you what a standard manuscript submission looks like – you’re not meant to edit it…

You write the novel inside the Manuscript folder (which may also be called Draft). Create a new folder for each chapter, and inside each chapter, create a document for each scene.

It’s only when you compile the project, after you’ve finished the novel, that it will look like the PDF example (assuming you’ve chosen the ‘Manuscript’ compilation format in the compilation dialogue box).

BTW, it sounds like you may not have done the Interactive Tutorial yet (it’s on the Help menu). The best advice anyone can give you is to spend a hour or so going through this tutorial now – you’ll get a much better idea of how to get the best out of Scrivener (it’s really not like Word…), and you’ll save yourself a lot of time and effort afterwards.

HTH

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As @brookter says, it’s a PDF file. That matters because Scrivener doesn’t edit PDF files. It produces them, but it doesn’t edit them.

If you have an app that does edit PDFs, use that.

Thank you to all of you.

I have been using Scrivener for many years, but did not notice the PDF aspect of the "sample research file.
Not sure why a full manuscript example would be put in the research folder, but, it was there. :wink:

To bad about the Linux thing though.
Regarding the Mac suggestion. Mac is , well a pain in the donkey for technical people. I despise it treats its users like idiots to stupid to know what to do, or how they want to do things. So, looks like I go to Linux, and Run an isolated VM with an older version of windows.

Hope they keep backward compatibility to Windows 7, as that would be my windows of choice for a VM not connected to the web.

Again, thank you for the quick responses.

Respectfully

AK Llyr

Scrivener does need an occasional connection to the web to talk to its licensing service.

One factor to consider in OS support is that L&L builds Scrivener for Windows on top of the Qt development framework. As a result, if the version of Qt they’re using no longer supports Windows 7, it’s hard for Scrivener to do so.

Scrivener 3.1.1.0 appears to be using Qt 5.15, which is supported until (at most) May 2023 for customers that have a support license. Qt 5.15 is the last released version of Qt 5 – the next version will likely be some form of Qt 6.x, which does remove support for Windows 7 and Windows 8.x.

Of course, this is just an educated guess from an outsider – I don’t work for L&L, so I don’t know any of their internal thought processes, or if they have any other constraints/requirements that would affect that timeline. I suspect they’re using a Qt commercial license (using the open source license would imply that they would need to be sharing Scrivener’s source code as well) but I don’t know that for sure, and if my guess is wrong there, then they may not need to move off of Qt 5.15 on the same timeframe.

At any rate, it looks like you’re good to use Windows 7 with the current version, at least until they have to update which version of Qt they’re using. Something to keep in mind.