Scrivener – Page 15 – Gwen Hernandez

Tech Tuesday: Annotations in Scrivener

April 13, 2010Gwen HernandezWriting Life38 Comments

Do you ever wish you could scribble on your manuscript? Maybe you want to make notes about a particular paragraph you're struggling with, or mark a place that requires further research.

You guessed it. Scrivener has a function for that. It's called Annotations.

Add an Annotation

To activate the Annotation feature:

Choose Format—>Inline Annotation.
Type in your note or reminder. Make sure to set your spacing as if the annotation wasn't there, otherwise it'll be off when you print/export your manuscript.
Click outside of annotation, or go to Format—>Inline Annotation to turn it off (or, even easier, use Shift+Cmd+A for Mac, Ctrl+Shift+A for Windows).

Change the Color

If the glaring red color is too distracting, you can change it.

Mac

All future annotations will be in the new color, but previously created annotations are not affected.

Select the annotation text.
From the Format bar, choose the desired text color (or go to Format—>Font—>Show Colors and select a color).

Windows

All current and future annotations will have the new color.

Go to Tools—>Options—>Appearance.
In the Colors section, click the expansion arrow next to Editor (or double-click Editor) and select Annotation Text in the list.
Click the color box to the right and select the desired annotation color.
Click OK to apply your changes and close the Options window.

Find Your Annotations

Here's the most important part of all. After you've gone through your manuscript and you want to find the notes you made to yourself, there's an easy search.

Go to Edit—>Find—>Find by Formatting.
When the box opens, choose Inline Annotations.
To search for the next one, click Next.

If you code your Annotations (for revisions, research, etc.), you can search for only those annotations relating to what you're ready to work on. How cool is that?

In the Containing Text: box, enter the search string you want to look for.
Click Next. Scrivener will return the next annotation that meets your search criteria.

Dealing with Annotations During Compile

When you're ready to export/print your manuscript, you have a couple of options. In Compile Manuscript, under the Text Options tab, you can choose to Remove Annotations or Export Annotations as RTF.

The first option strips them out of your MS. This is where the spacing becomes important. The second option embeds the annotations in your MS (much as they look on your screen), in red and flanked by square brackets.

For all you contest judges, I could see importing the electronic entry into Scrivener, making your comments through annotations, and then exporting it with the Export Annotations as RTF feature selected. This gives you the commenting ease of Word's Track Changes function, but provides a contest-friendly RTF output.

What's your favorite way to use annotations?

Need more Scrivener 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.

Write on!

[Post updated 7/6/17]

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Addicted to blog stats

April 9, 2010Gwen HernandezRandom26 Comments

I'm addicted to my blog stats page. It's kind of pathetic. These days I average about 30-50 views per day. That's not unique visitors, but rather how many pages are viewed. It could be one energetic visitor, or a whole bunch of people who show up and don't see anything interesting to look at.

I can tell which pages are viewed and how many times, but that's about it. Not quite as informative as the web site stats I used to get when I had my own site, but I can't complain because WordPress is free!

So back to those stats. It's always fun on Wednesdays when the guys over at Scrivener give me a shout out on Facebook and Twitter for my Tech Tuesday post. On one record day, I had 327 views (that was for the Templates post), mostly from Facebook. So, this week, I'll admit I was a bit disappointed when I didn't get a mention for the post on saving Compile Manuscript settings. I thought it was a really cool feature that a lot of people would be excited about.

Only 37 views this time.

One of the reasons I keep doing my Scrivener posts is because I've had such a good response. When I'm reaching that many people, I feel like I'm helping my fellow writers. I enjoy finding new tricks to make my life–and that of others–easier. Tech Tuesday has been my outlet for that and my penchant for teaching (that pesky know-it-all complex).

So, 37 views was disappointing. I really missed that “2” in the middle. 😉

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not bashing the Scrivener guys. I love Keith and David for all their hard work. I know Keith is busy working on Scrivener 2.0 and I'm really psyched about it. They don't owe me a weekly mention. I already got a fabulous program from them that makes writing so much easier than Word.

What I'm bashing, really, is me. For caring too much about how many people care about what I have to say.

There are far too many blogs out there for me to keep up with. Even good ones that I enjoy. I know this. And it's the same for everyone else.

It's my job to ensure I'm adding enough value that people want to come back.

The rest will follow.

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Tech Tuesday: Saving Compile Manuscript Settings in Scrivener

April 6, 2010Gwen HernandezTech Stuff25 Comments

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.

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.

Need 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.

Write on!
[Updated 5/10/13]

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Tech Tuesday: Templates in Scrivener

March 30, 2010Gwen HernandezWriting Life25 Comments

UPDATE: For the Scrivener 2.x templates post, click here.

If you've been working in Scrivener for a while, you probably have it set up exactly the way you like it. You've modified the labels, opened the Inspector, created your own extra folders and files for things like unused scenes, research, productivity tracking, character sketches, and saved searches. Maybe you like to have twenty chapter folders all formatted correctly, ready and waiting to fill.

However you like to set it up, you'd probably prefer not to have to do it again every time you start a new project. As always, there's a fix for that. Scrivener allows you to save templates. If you use Scrivener to write both novels and screenplays, you can create a template for each.

To get started, you can open a new project and set it up, or take an existing project that's set up the way you like it, make a copy in Finder, and then open it in Scrivener. If you use an existing one, strip out everything that's specific to the existing project (labels, text documents, research documents, etc.) and then save it.

Once you have your blank shell you're ready to proceed.

From the File menu, choose Save As Template…
Enter the Template Name and a Description

Now, you're ready to create a new project using your template.

From the File menu, choose New Project (or choose New Project next time you open Scrivener)
Select the template you want to use and click Next.
– Note: The Templates… drop down box at the bottom will allow you to import templates from other people, export your templates to share with others, delete existing templates, and choose to make the selected template the default.
Enter your Project Name and you're done.

Need 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.

And, I'd love to hear suggestions for future Tech Tuesday posts. Write on!

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Tech Tuesday: Project Replace in Scrivener

March 23, 2010Gwen HernandezWriting Life20 Comments

If you change your character's name from Rob to Joe, and you don't set it up correctly, you could end up with odd words in your manuscript, like “PJoeably”, “Joe a bank”, and “thJoe”. Of course, Scrivener's Project Replace feature has a couple of important options to ensure that you only replace the desired instances of a word within your MS.

To access the Project Replace feature, click the Edit menu, select Find, choose Project Replace…

Ignore Case: Will replace all matches, regardless of capitalization. Not recommended when replacing names or acronyms. NOTE: Ignore Case only applies to the Replace box, not the With box. If you type “Joe” in the With box, it will replace both “Rob” and “rob” with “Joe”.

Whole words only: This will avoid the “pjoelem” discussed earlier. If this is checked, Scrivener will only mark “Rob” or “rob” (depending on your case choices) for replacement. Great for replacing “pin” with “needle” without changing “hoping” to “honeedleg”. 😉 Bad for proper nouns where you may have possessive or contracted forms (e.g. Rob's, Rob'll).

Both unchecked: All instances of the letters matching the case you've used in the Replace box will be marked for replacement, regardless of their appearance within another word. In the picture example above, “Rob”, “Rob's”, “Robbing” will be affected, but not “rob”, “probe”, or “ROB”.

Both checked: The exact word entered in the Replace box will be marked for replacement, regardless of case. In the picture example above, “Rob”, “rob”, and “ROB” will be affected, but not “Rob's”, “robber”, or “probably”.

Scope: Check the documents you'd like to be affected by the replace action.

The easiest way to understand Project Replace is to play around with it yourself. If you're nervous about what Scrivener will replace, you might first use the Project Search feature (covered in last week's post) to see what it returns for a match. Or you can double-check the results using Project Search after you perform the Replace.

Need 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.

Write on.

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Tech Tuesday: Advanced Searches in Scrivener

March 16, 2010Gwen HernandezTech Stuff11 Comments

Well, last week's Tech Tuesday post on the cool search engine WolframAlpha went over like a lead balloon, so this week it's back to Scrivener to learn about advanced search features.

The easiest search to use in Scrivener is the Project Search, which is available from the Search box in the toolbar. You type in the word, word part, or phrase you're looking for, and a list of all documents containing your search string will appear in the binder. Click on each document to see the search string highlighted wherever it occurs in that file.

Simple!

To close the search results, click the small X at the bottom right corner of the Binder panel.

Now, what if you want to limit your search to your synopses, or you want it to be case-sensitive? Never fear, there's a menu for that. Just click on the magnifying glass (see image below).

If you find yourself performing the same search repeatedly, click on Save Search As Collection. The saved search will retain all of your preferences, and show up in your Collections with the title you provide. Go to View–>Collections–>[name of saved search] to run the search anytime and view the results.

One last note about searching. If you only want to search within the individual text document you're working on, go to Edit–>Find–>Find, and fill out the dialog box.

As always, for more information, check out my book or online courses.

Now that you know how to search, next week we'll discuss Project Replace. Happy hunting!

Need 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 8/25/14]

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Tech Tuesday: Binder features in Scrivener

March 2, 2010Gwen HernandezTech Stuff, Writing Life17 Comments

While checking out the Scrivener help recently, I came across some handy commands for the Binder–you know, the list of folders and files that appears along the left side of the Scrivener screen. I hope you find these as useful as I did.

Remember:

For contiguous selection, use the shift key
For non-contiguous selection, use the cmd key

Duplicate/Simple Duplicate – This useful feature allows you to make a replica of a document, or a folder that will retain the settings and contents of the original. In a recent post, I recommended creating a copy of a scene before you revise it. The Duplicate feature is a quick, easy way to do it. It's also great when making a structure of chapter folders that have the same properties (like when preparing a new project, or creating a template).

Duplicate – Will make a complete copy of a document/folder and all of its subdocuments, and add “copy – #” to the end of the new file.

Select the file/folder you want to duplicate.
From the Documents menu, select Duplicate.

Simple Duplicate – Same as Duplicate, but will not copy any subdocuments, or provide a distinguishing title to the new file.

Select the file/folder you want to duplicate.
From the Documents menu, select Simple Duplicate.

Group Files – If you don't like to group your scenes into chapters until you're done with the MS, this feature is for you. It will take the selected files and group them together into a new folder, all ready for you to name.

Select the files/folders you'd like to combine into one folder.
From the Documents menu, select Group.
Enter the folder name on the highlighted line.

Change the Label/Status of >1 document at a time – I've already talked about how to customize the Label and Status menus, but here's a helpful way to apply a Label or Status to more than one document at a time.

Select the files/folders to which you'd like to apply a new Label or Status.
Right-click (or ctrl + click for Mac) on the selection.
Point to the Label (or Status) menu item, and choose the value you'd like to apply.

Tint the Binder icons – This changes the file/folder icons in the Binder from white, to their Label color. It provides a quick visual reference. I use Labels for POV so I can quickly tell whose point of view a scene is in when this feature is turned on.

From the View menu, choose Tint Icons With Label Color

At the bottom of the Binder is a button that looks like a gear. If you press that, you'll get a useful menu that includes several of the items discussed above.

Need 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.

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