Why all files are converted to RTF ?

Scrivener Scrivener for Windows
1

Hello everyone,

I’m French PHD candidate and I would use Scrivener to write my thesis.
I downloaded beta version about 2 months ago and I love it. :stuck_out_tongue:

However, unfortunately, when I transfer a PDF or DOC file to Scrivener, it convert this file in RTF and consequently I cannot read it via Scrivener. :confused:

By the way, I’m a Windows 7 64-Bit user.

Does anyone has a solution to my problem ?

Thanks ! :slight_smile:

2

Hi,

How did you do the import? Scrivener will convert text documents into RTF files, so yes, if you import a .doc file it will be converted to .rtf, although ideally you shouldn’t lose formatting, etc. through this process. Ideally because Lee’s still ironing out a few bugs with .doc import; for the most part it seems to either work fine or it imports just the title but the document remains blank. Is that what happened to you? If so, try resaving the file in Word as a .rtf file and then import that .rtf file.

PDFs, however, shouldn’t be converted at all but be imported as they are, so I’m a little confused what happened there. You can’t import PDFs or other non-text items into the Draft folder, so perhaps the import just didn’t go through? Try selecting the Research folder, then importing the PDF and see if that works. If it doesn’t, could you copy the text of any error messages you get (or post a screen shot) and describe what you did and what happened?

Thanks for your interest in Scrivener; sorry I’m a bit late getting back to this!

3

I tried to import into “Research” folder but am similarly getting a prompt saying the file will be converted into a RTF file. I have successfully imported PDFs into my “research” file on my desktop but am not able to on my netbook.

4

PDF files don’t get converted when importing into the project (it’s just supported text document types that do, so they can be edited in Scrivener); non-text types can’t be imported into the Draft folder, but anywhere else in the binder is fair game. My guess here is just that you’re seeing the standard “Import Files” message explaining that text documents will be converted to RTF, and that the Draft doesn’t support media types. This is just a general info message; it doesn’t mean your PDFs are going to be converted. You can tick the “Do not show” box in the lower left to prevent it occurring every time you import, which is probably what you did on your desktop.