project references – Gwen Hernandez

Adding Evernote notes to a Scrivener project

March 12, 2015Gwen HernandezTech Stuff24 Comments

Evernote invariably comes up in my Scrivener courses. Someone mentions how they use it for their research and asks how to integrate it with Scrivener. Someone else asks what it is, and off we go. 😉

Since Evernote is a web clipping tool at its core—and a fabulous way to keep track of all sorts of things, from recipes, all of the ISBNs related to a book, book release checklists, travel resources, and more—it often does a much nicer job of grabbing Internet content than Scrivener. Which is fine with me. I want Keith and the crew at Literature & Latte focusing on Scrivener’s core competencies anyway. Especially since it’s a cinch to import or link to research files stored in Evernote.

Here are a few ways to do bring your Evernote content into a Scrivener project. (Click any image for a larger view.)

Import an Evernote Note as a Web Page

Rather than import the web page directly, let Evernote clip and convert into a nice format, then import the Evernote note.

Locate your note in Evernote.
Right-click the Note (or select it and click the Note menu).
Go to More Sharing—>Copy Public Link (Mac) or Share—>Copy Share URL (Windows).
NOTE: The link is available publicly, but you’d pretty much have to tell someone where to look for it (via the link) for them to find it. Still, don’t link to any private or personal information this way. If you just copy the note link instead, it may not work properly when you try to view it in Scrivener.

Mac

Windows
Switch to your Scrivener project.
Select the folder (one outside of the Draft/Manuscript folder; Research is a good choice) where you’d like to import the web page.
Go to File—>Import—>Web Page (or right-click the folder and go to Add—>Web Page).
A dialogue box appears.
If the web address (URL) is not already filled in with the link you copied, paste it into the Address box.
In the Title box, add a title for the web page to remind you what it is.
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Windows
(Windows only) Choose how you want to import it. Webpage Complete (MHT) or one of the PDF options should work, but I’m currently having issues importing web pages—especially as PDFs—into Scrivener on my Windows 7 machine. See Windows Import Workaround below.
Click OK.
Scrivener imports the note and adds it to the folder as a web page. Select it in the Binder to view. All of the links are active and clickable. NOTE: The import process can take a-w-h-i-l-e.

Windows Import Workaround

Locate the note in Evernote, right-click, and choose Export Note.
Choose Export as a Single HTML Web Page (.html).
Click Export and save the file to a location where you can find it again (Desktop, maybe?).
If you get a message that the export succeeded, click Close.
Switch to Scrivener and right-click the folder where you want to import the web page. Choose Add—>Files.
Select the HTML file you just saved from Evernote, and click Open. If you get the Import Files dialogue box, click OK.
The pictures may not import (they’re in a folder on your computer with the same name as the individual HTML file), but the links should work (if not, right-click the hyperlink and choose Copy Link, then paste into your browser).

Create a Reference (Bookmark) to an Evernote Note

Don’t want to clutter up your Binder? Having issues importing notes as web pages? Or maybe you want to link to a note that you expect to update regularly so you always want the most current version.

Create a reference (called Bookmarks in Scrivener 3) to it instead. We’re going to create a project reference, but the steps are the same if you want a document reference (just select the document in the Binder and choose Document References in step 3).

Follow steps 1-4 above to copy the note URL.
Click the References button in the Inspector pane (or go to View—>Inspect—>References).
Make sure the References header says “Project References.” If not, click it to toggle to Project References.
Click the + button and choose Create External Reference.
Enter the title and paste the URL into the appropriate text boxes.
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Windows
To view your note, double-click the paper icon to the left of the reference.

Create a TOC Note in Evernote

Want a references-like list of clickable links to your Evernote notes on a particular topic, stored as a web page in Scrivener? Follow these steps to create a Table of Contents (TOC) note. It’s a handy thing to have within Evernote too (e.g. as a link from one Evernote folder to notes in another).

Select the desired notes in Evernote (the Expanded Card View didn’t work for me, but all others did).
Mac

Windows
Click the Create Table of Contents Note button that appears on the right.
Evernote creates a TOC note that you can move to any folder within your Evernote account.

Mac

Windows
Follow the steps in the Import an Evernote Note as a Web Page section above to import the TOC note.
Evernote TOC Note viewed in Scrivener

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References in Scrivener

October 23, 2013Gwen HernandezTech Stuff27 Comments

[UPDATE 31Jan2020: For the Scrivener 3 version of this info, check out this post on Bookmarks at Writer Unboxed.]

Importing research, images, and web pages into Scrivener is handy, but sometimes creating a reference might be a better option. When might you want to use a reference instead of importing?

When you always want the most up-to-date version of a file or web page.
When you import a file, Scrivener creates a copy of it, thus freezing it in its current incarnation. Sometimes that’s desirable, other times not.

If the file is large or you have a lot of them.
Importing files increases the size of your project, which can slow down backups and syncing with online drives. A large project may take up too much space on a flash drive or be too big to email. Some people also prefer not to have their Research folder cluttered with anything but the most important reference materials.

When a web page doesn’t import well.
If you’re having trouble importing a web page, a reference lets you create quick access to it.

When you don’t need to refer to the item frequently, but want to be able to find it easily.
You can create internal references that point to items within the project (usually as document references, see below), but I’m going to focus on external references in this post. External references point to items outside of the project, located either on a drive accessible by your computer, or a web page.

Accessing the References Pane

To view the References Pane, click the References button at the top of the Inspector.

Mac

Windows

You can create a document or project reference. A document reference is only visible when the item to which it’s attached is being viewed in the Editor (or is selected in the Corkboard or Outliner). A project reference is visible regardless of which item currently has the focus in a project.

Click the References header in the Inspector to toggle between Project References and Document References, see below. In this post, I’ll be creating project references.

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Windows

Creating a Reference To a File

Use this procedure to add a project reference to a file on a drive that’s accessible from your computer.

1. If necessary, toggle the header to Project References.
2. Click the [+] button and choose Look Up and Add External Reference.

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Windows

3. When the Add References window opens, choose a file and click Open.
The reference document shows up on the line. For Mac users, the URL in this case is the file's address on your drive.

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Windows

Creating a Reference To a Web Page

This option lets you manually enter the reference information. If you happened to know the file path for a file on your computer, you could use this option to add it as well.

1. Click the [+] button and choose Create External Reference.
2. In the first text box, enter the description of the reference (e.g. Bob’s Vacation). Press the tab key to move to the URL text box.
3. Type (or copy and paste) the web address for the page (e.g. http://www.pismobeach.org/).
4. Press Return or click anywhere in the References pane.

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Windows

TIP: You can create links to Evernote notes this way too. See this post for more on how to copy a note's URL.

Dragging & Dropping References

To add any kind of reference, you can also drag it from Finder (Mac) or Windows Explorer (PC), the Scrivener project Binder, or your browser’s address bar (grab the URL icon) directly to the References pane. No extra steps or clicking buttons required.

Just make sure you’ve selected either Document or Project References first, and that for a document reference, the desired document has the focus in your project.

Viewing a Reference

To view a reference, double-click on the document icon at the left of the reference line.

Editing a Reference

If you give a reference the wrong name, or need to edit the location, you can edit it anytime by double-clicking it.

Deleting a Reference

Select the desired reference.
Click the [-] button in the References header.
The reference is removed.

Want more help? Sign up for an online class, read more Scrivener articles, or schedule a private training session. If you don't already have it, you can download Scrivener here.

{Updated 17 Mar 2016}