Last week's Tech Tuesday post on Templates was the most popular ever. Thanks to everyone who stopped by! That's a hard act to follow, but I'll give it my best.

Did you know that in addition to saving your project settings into a template, you can also save your Compile Manuscript settings?

Here are the benefits of such a feature. Once you get everything set the way you want it, the settings will be available to all projects. In addition, you can save more than one print setup, so you could have one for e-books, one for manuscript submissions, and another for what you send to your critique partner.

Brilliant, I say.

Here's how to save your settings.

Mac

1. Go to File–>Compile.

2. Set the options for Content, Text Options, and Formatting exactly the way you want to save them. The only options that won't be saved are the document and folder selections, since these are project specific.

3. Click the Format As drop-down menu at the top of the window and choose Manage Compile Format Presets.

4. Click the [+] button at the bottom right of the window that appears.

5. Enter a name for the saved settings (e.g. Novel Export, or Notes Only), and click OK. Click OK again to return to Compile.

6. Your saved preset now appears in the Format As drop-down menu, under My Formats.

Windows

1. Go to File–>Compile.

2. Set the options for Content, Text Options, and Formatting exactly the way you want to save them. The only options that won't be saved are the document and folder selections, since these are project specific.

3. Click the Save Preset button at the bottom left of the Compile window.

4. Enter a name for the saved settings (e.g. Novel Export, or Notes Only), and click OK.

5. Your saved preset now appears in the Format As drop-down menu, under My Formats.

Using Saved Settings

Now you've saved your settings into a file, but the really powerful part comes when you're ready to use them.

1. From any project, repeat step 1 above to open the Compile window. The current settings will be whatever you last used when you exported or printed, or the software default if it's a new project.
(Note: the most recent settings in Compile affect the word count in the various statistics views.)

2. Select your preset from the Format As drop-down list.

3. Make sure you've chosen the correct files and folders to include and you're ready to print or export your draft.

I hope this saves you some time in the future.

As always, I'd love to hear your ideas for a future Tech Tuesday topic.

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