Writing a long scene, and somehow I got lost and hit a few ‘extra’ keys and buttons together – and my formatting all went haywire on this one single scene.
Now instead of there being wall to wall solid writing with a nicely indented start to each paragraph, it has a half inch border on the left and NO indents at all for new graphs. Plus, hitting Enter at the end of graph lines up the new text with no indent.
Know this is pretty dumb, but I can’t find out how to get the scene to revert to the proper look like the rest of the book so far…is there a way to simply C + A to grab it all and get it to look a certain way?
Did you try pressing Ctrl+Z on the scene in question? That’s basically an undo operation, and you can press it multiple times to undo multiple operations. If the same session from when these problems occurred is still open, it may revert the changes (it probably won’t work if you’ve closed the project, as I doubt it saves your command history across sessions).
If this is the first time you’ve used Ctrl+Z, also be aware of Ctrl+Y, which enables you to redo changes after you undo them using Ctrl+Z. For instance if you enter Ctrl+Z several times to back out the last several updates, and back out one too many, Ctrl+Y will reapply the last change you backed out.
Ctrl+A does a select all (also available via Edit > Select All).
Looks like the first line indent related key combos, which apply to current or all selected paragraphs are:
Ctrl+T increases first line indent
Shift+Ctrl+T reduces line indent
And left margin indent related key combos are:
Ctrl+Q increases left margin indent
Shift+Ctrl+Q reduces left margin indent
There’s a list of the keyboard shortcuts in Tools > Options > Keyboard.
These particular shortcuts were listed in the Other category.
It appears that one can use the Export at the bottom left of the list window to export the list of shortcuts to a plain text file for reference or printing.
Alternately:
If the ruler is not visible at the top of the document, do Format > Ruler.
Select all text in the document that needs corrected.
Slide the ruler’s first line indent marker (upside down triangle) right to the desired indent.
The other marker (right side up trangle stacked atop a square) is presumably all the way to the left at the zero mark.
Also note the Documents/Convert/Formatting to Default Text Style menu command can come in really handy for these kinds of things. That will convert the paragraph and font settings to those set up in Tools/Options…, under the Editor tab (or just what you get when you make a new document and start typing).
thanks one and all…and here’s what I had to do to fix it…
C & A selected all my text…
and then nothing else would work; I tried C & T to increase or C & Shift & T to decrease the first graph line indents – nada. Not a thing changed at all…
So…I added the ruler, C&A to select all, and then slid over the top triangle to be properly placed…
that’s all that would work for me…
On another note, when I go to Tools & Options - I can not find the place to set up the WHOLE book for default type settings…what am I missing…?
There isn’t a setting for that in the global application options. After all, one can write dozens of books with Scrivener, and even things that aren’t books, so these kinds of specific details are left up to the project themselves—namely their Compile settings, or how they export.
In other words, try to use the settings in the Editor tab of Options to pick something you prefer writing with, as a personal choice, and worry about the font size and indent settings later. You can test this theory easily by using File/Compile… menu command and selecting a “Format As” preset like the standard manuscript format, and you’ll see how your text as it is in the editor is transformed to 12pt Courier on output.
Regarding some keyboard control key sequences not working, a few possibilities come to mind…
That some sequences may have been changed/customized within Scrivener.
In Scrivener, go to Tools > Options > Keyboard (in left column)
then review in right column, down in the Other grouping
and see if the current setting match those below.
OTHER (may appear in different sequence within the OTHER group)
Increase Left Indent: Ctrl+Q
Decrease Left Indent: Ctrl+Shift+Q
Increase Text Indent: Ctrl+T
Decrease Text Indent: Ctrl+Shift+T
Possibility that a legit keyboard macro recorder/automator of some sort is running that is intercepting/repurposing some of the keyboard control key sequences (Windows itself offers something like this)…
or… a non-legit keyboard interceptor/logger is present.
Legit ones should appear in the installed programs list. Non-legit ones probably would not.
Some keyboard hardware issue or keyboard redefinition that exists.