Scrivener’s main interface comprises the following:

• The list on the left is called the binder, because it acts as the project’s ring-binder,
being where you file and organise all of your material.

• The editor contains the text you are reading right now, and is where you’ll do all
your writing. It can also show research documents, such as images and PDF files.

• If you click on the “i” in the right of the toolbar (the strip of buttons at the top of
the window), you’ll open the inspector. The inspector displays information
relating to the document currently shown in the editor, such as its synopsis,
label and status.

Let’s start by looking at the binder in a little more detail—in the binder sidebar, click on
the document entitled “The Binder”.

Using the Binder

The binder is the main navigation tool in Scrivener. You use it to access different parts
of your project, as well as to create new sections and arrange them. ( Note: we refer to
each section in the binder as a “document”, but each document can contain as much or
as little text as you like.)

The basics are simple:

• Click on a document to open it in the editor.

• Click on the chevron next to a folder or group to show or hide (expand or

collapse) its contents (subdocuments).

• Drag and drop documents to rearrange them.

• Double-click on a document to rename it.

• Click “+” in the footer at the bottom of the binder (or in the toolbar) to create a
new document. (Ctrl+N)

• To create a new folder, click the button containing a folder with a “+” inside it at
the bottom of the binder, or click the down arrow next to the “+” button in the
toolbar. (Alt+Shift+N)

• You can also add new documents from the Project menu or by hitting enter when
a document is selected and the binder has the focus.

• Import files into Scrivener by dragging them from File Explorer into Scrivener’s

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 binder. Alternatively, use File > Import > Files… in Scrivener’s main menu at the
top of the screen.

Special Folders
Along with anything else you add, the binder always contains three special folders that
cannot be removed:

1. The Draft folder. Anything you want to be part of your finished manuscript
should be placed inside this folder. Its contents will be compiled into a single
document when you export or print using File > Compile… Because the Draft
folder is used for building your manuscript, it is unique in that it can only hold
text files—you cannot import image or research files into this folder.

⁃ Tip: If you want an image in the text of your manuscript, place the cursor
inside a text document in the Draft and use Insert > Image From File… to
insert the image into the text.

⁃ Note: All folders and files can be renamed, even the special folders. In
some of Scrivener’s project templates, the Draft folder has a different
name, such as “Manuscript”.

2. The Research folder can hold text or media files (images, PDF files, video files and
more), and is the default storage location for research materials not intended for
inclusion in the final manuscript. You don’t have to put all your research files
into the Research folder, though—you can create other folders for your support
materials anywhere you want.

3. Whenever you delete a document, it ends up in the Trash folder. Documents are
not deleted forever until you select Empty Trash… from the Project menu.

There’s Nothing Special About Other Folders

In Scrivener, there’s no real difference between folders (excepting the three special
folders) and text files. A folder is just a special kind of text file that has a different icon
and opens in a different editor view mode by default (we’ll get to view modes shortly).

You can convert a folder document to a text document and vice versa easily. Try this
now:

• Right-click on the currently selected document in the binder (“The Binder”

document).

• From the contextual menu that appears, select Convert to Folder. Note how the
file icon becomes a folder icon.

• Right-click on “The Binder” document again. You’ll see that the option is now

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 Convert to File—click it to convert back. (You can also convert from the
Documents menu.)

So, whether you prefer to use folders or text groups is entirely up to you, and you can
convert between them at any time. (Note: A text or file group is any non-folder that has
subdocuments.)

Searching
To search for documents in the project:

1. Click on the magnifying glass in the toolbar. A search field will appear at the top
of the binder.

2. Enter text in the search field. The binder will be replaced with a purple search
results list.

⁃ Tip: Click on the magnifying glass icon in the left of the search field to change
search options.

3. Click on the “X” in the left of the search results header bar to return to the binder,
or click on the magnifying glass in the toolbar again.

4. Click on the magnifying glass in the toolbar to hide the search field if it is still
visible.

You can also run a quick search for documents using Quick Search field in the toolbar
(which currently shows “The Binder”, the current document name). This works like the
search field in a web browser and brings up a menu of the top results. This is great
when you know the title of the document you want to find.

Now let’s take a look at the editor—click on “The Editor” in the binder.

The text you are reading now is contained in the editor. There are several ways to load a
document into the editor, but the one you will use most often is to select a file in the

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binder, as you did to load this one.

Scrivener’s editor can display a range of different file types, so let’s try loading an image:

• In the binder, scroll down to the “Research” folder (you might need to expand it
by clicking on the chevron next to it first) and then click on “Sunset”.

• Once you’ve tested that out, return here.

Using the Editor

• The Format Bar appears directly below the toolbar. It provides easy access to
many common formatting controls, such as bold, italics, paragraph alignment
and spacing, and highlights.

• More formatting features can be found in the Format menu.

• The Insert menu allows you to insert images, tables, footnotes, comments and
other elements into the text.

• Edit > Find > Find… in the main menu or using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F
brings up the Find dialog, allowing you to search through text in the editor.

• If you’re a screenwriter, playwright or comic writer, you can enter scriptwriting

mode via Format > Scriptwriting > Script Mode. (You can also toggle between
scriptwriting and regular modes using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+8.)

The Header View

The header view (or bar) runs across the top of the editor and contains the name of the
document, along with providing some useful tools.

Because in Scrivener you can break your writing up into sections as large or small as
you want, you’ll spend a lot of time jumping between them in the binder. Frequently,
you’ll simply want to return to the last document you were looking at. You can do so
using the history navigation buttons:

• Try clicking on the back button (the left-pointing chevron) on the left of the
header bar. It will take you to the previous document you were looking at.

• Click on the forward button next to it to return here.

• The up and down chevrons on the right of the header view work similarly, except
that instead of navigating through the document history, they take you to the
next or previous document in the binder.

Note: After navigating with the history buttons, the binder selection may not match what is shown

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in the main editor. (You can thus check back on a document you edited earlier without losing your
place.) When the editor shows a different document to the one selected in the binder, a
secondary light grey bar appears in the binder to indicate the current editor document.

Tip: Using Navigate > Reveal in Binder tells the binder to select the document currently open in the
editor.

Also in the header bar:

• You can right-click on the header document icon to bring up a menu of useful
options.

• You can click into the title to rename the document.

• You can drag the icon shown next to the title in the same way that you can drag
documents in the binder.

• You can drag a document from the binder into the header bar to load it.

• The square icon on the very right of the header view will split the editor, but
we’ll come to that shortly.

The Footer View

The footer view is the horizontal bar beneath the editor. It will contain slightly different
controls depending on what is open in the editor.

• When text is open in the editor, its word count is shown in the footer view. (You
can change this to show the character count using Scrivener’s “Editing” settings,
available from File > Options... in the main menu.) Click on the word count for
more information.

⁃ Tip #1: If the word count ever disappears from the footer view, it is most
likely because you have switched on scriptwriting mode (see above).

⁃ Tip #2: To see the word count of your entire draft, hover over the search
field in the toolbar with your mouse. Doing so will display a count of all
the words in the Draft folder (on the left) and a count of the words you
have written in the current session (on the right).

⁃ Tip #3: You can set a word or character count target for your manuscript
via Project > Project Targets. (You can also set targets for individual
documents by clicking on the target icon in the footer view.)

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 • You can change the current text scale (zoom) using the percentage control on the
left of the footer view. (This does not change the font size; it just zooms in and
out of the document.)

• When viewing PDF files, the footer view allows you to navigate between the
pages. Click on “spacewalk_info” in the Research folder to test this out, and then
come back here by clicking on the “back” arrow in the header view.

At this point, now that you know how to use the binder and editor, you could go off and
start using Scrivener, because the binder and editor are the two features you’ll be using
the most. So if you’re itching to jump in, feel free to go and create your own project ( File
> New Project…) and experiment. Just know that, like Luke Skywalker at the end of The
Empire Strikes Back, you’re not fully trained in the ways of the Force just yet. Be sure to
come back to Dagobah here as soon as you’re ready to continue your training.

Ready? Okay, click on “The Inspector” in the binder (or the down chevron on the right of
the header view) and let’s do ourselves some inspecting.

Click the blue “i” icon on the right of the toolbar to open the inspector. The inspector
will appear as a third pane on the right of the window, and it shows extra information
associated with the document that you have open in the editor.

At the top of the inspector you will see these buttons:

These buttons change what is displayed in the inspector. From left to right, they are:

• Notes: The document synopsis and notes.

• Bookmarks: Bookmarks associated with the document and project.

• Metadata: Various metadata relating to the document.

• Snapshots: Snapshots you have taken of the document. (Snapshots are older
versions of the document.)

• Comments & Footnotes: Comments and footnotes associated with the text in the
editor.

The buttons available will change depending on what sort of document is shown in the
editor. For instance, “Snapshots” and “Comments & Footnotes” are only available for
text documents.

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A dot in the corner of one of these buttons indicates that there is content in the
associated tab.

Let’s start by clicking on the Notes button. Once you’ve done that, select “Synopsis &
Notes” in the binder.

Synopsis Index Card

At the top of the Notes tab of the inspector is a virtual index card, in which you can type
a synopsis of your document (the header of the index card can be used to rename the
document, too).

A core idea behind Scrivener is that every section of the project is associated with a
synopsis which can be viewed either alongside the section text (in the inspector) or
alongside other synopses (in the corkboard or outliner). This allows you to switch
between an overview of your manuscript and its text.

Imagine it like this: each document in Scrivener is a sheet of paper with an index card
clipped to it. You can scrawl a summary of the document onto the index card, and then
you can take the card and lay it out alongside other index cards to work with the bigger
picture. (We’ll see that bigger picture when we come to look at the corkboard and
outliner views.)

Notes
Below the index card is the notes area, where you can jot down anything relating to the
document that you don’t want in the text itself, such as ideas and problems.

On to “Label & Status”…

At the bottom of the inspector are the label and status pop-up buttons. (This document’s
label is “Blue” and its status is “To Do”.)

Label and status are simply arbitrary tags that you can assign to a document. You set up
the label and status tags you want to use in a project by going to Project > Project
Settings… You might, for example, rename “Label” to “POV” (for Point of View) and use
it to record the name of the point-of-view characters in a novel, so that you can assign a
character to each scene.

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Status works much the same way, except that it is meant to keep track of the state of the
document—for instance, “Finished”, “To do”, “A Mess” and so forth—although you can
rename it and use it for anything you want. The only real difference between label and
status is that labels have colours associated with them, and status items do not.

Tip: To assign a label or status to multiple documents, select several documents in the binder,
right-click on them, and select the label or status from the contextual menu that appears.

Next, click on “Bookmarks” in the binder.

Click on the Bookmarks button in the inspector header bar (the second icon).

The Bookmarks tab allows you to store references to other documents in the project, on
your hard-disk, or on the internet.

To add a new bookmark, do one of the following:

• Click the three dots button above the Bookmarks list.

• Drag a document from the binder into the list.

• Drag a file from File Explorer into the list.

• Drag a URL from a browser into the list.

Selecting a bookmark in the list opens the content of the bookmark in the lower half of
the inspector. You can see that the “Key Concepts” document has been added as a
bookmark for this document, and that its text can be viewed right there in the inspector.
(Click on “Key Concepts” in the Bookmarks list at the top of the inspector if its contents
are not visible.)

Double-click a bookmark to open it: external bookmarks open in their default

application; internal bookmarks open inside Scrivener.

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Bookmarks can be associated with either individual documents or the entire project:
click the bar labelled “Document Bookmarks” to switch between Document Bookmarks
(specific to the current document) and Project Bookmarks (available from any
document).

Project Bookmarks
Project Bookmarks can also be accessed from the bookmarks icon in the toolbar,
providing fast navigation to frequently-needed documents:

• Click the red bookmark icon in the toolbar. A list will appear. I have already
added the “START HERE” document to the project bookmarks.

• Click “START HERE” in the list. The bookmarked document will be opened in the
editor.

• Hit the back button in the header view to return here afterwards.

Now select “Metadata” in the binder.

Click on the third button in the inspector header bar, the one containing the tag icon, to
open the Metadata tab.

Each document in Scrivener can be associated with different types of metadata. Which
metadata you use, or whether you use it at all, is entirely up to you.

General Metadata
At the top of the Metadata tab is “General Metadata”. This contains the following:

• Created Date and Modified Date: the dates on which the current document was
created and last edited.

• Include in Compile: if the document is inside the Draft folder, this checkbox
determines whether the current document should be included as part of the
final manuscript when compiled.

• Section Type: used by Compile to determine how to format the current document
in the manuscript. We’ll look at section types when we come to Compile.

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Custom Metadata
In the middle of the Metadata tab is “Custom Metadata”. By default, this tab is collapsed,
but you can expand it by clicking either the “Custom Metadata” header bar or the
disclosure chevron next to it.

Custom Metadata allows you to add your own checkboxes, pop-up menus, dates and
text fields so that you can keep track of any information that doesn’t fit elsewhere.

You can set up custom metadata by going to Project > Project Settings… or by clicking
the three dots icon at the top of the Custom Metadata area. Once you’ve done this, the
custom metadata for each document can be viewed and edited either in the inspector or
in the outliner.

Keywords
You can add arbitrary keywords to your documents to make searching for them easier,
or to make keeping track of what is in a particular document easier. For example, you
could add keywords for characters that occur in a scene, themes referenced or topics
discussed.

To add a keyword: Click the “+” button in the Keywords header bar.

You can also assign keywords via the keywords tab.

1. Click on the three dots icon in the “Keywords” header bar.

2. Select “Show Project Keywords”.

Alternatively, go to Project > Project Keywords in the main menu.

Do so now. A tab appears showing all keywords in the project. Here you can create,
organise and delete keywords, as well as search the project for selected keywords.

To change the colour associated with a keyword, double-click on its colour chip in the

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keywords tab.

Drag keywords from the tab to the inspector list to assign them to the current
document, or drag and drop them onto documents in the binder, outliner or corkboard
to assign them to selected documents there (you can assign keywords to multiple
documents this way).

Try dragging the keyword entitled “Assign this one” from the keywords tab to the
keywords list in the inspector now.

Okay, on to “Snapshots”.

Scrivener’s Snapshots feature keeps older versions of your documents around for
reference. To capture a version before embarking on a major edit of a document, select
Take Snapshot (Ctrl+5) in the Documents > Snapshots menu. Try that now (you will
hear the sound of a camera shutter which indicates that the snapshot has been taken).

Once you have taken a snapshot, you can edit your document safe in the knowledge that
you can return to the older version whenever you want.

Click on the “Snapshots” button (the one with the picture of a camera on it) in the
inspector header bar to see what I mean.

• The inspector now shows a list of snapshots at the top, which should consist of
the one you took and one I took while writing the first version of this tutorial.

• Clicking on a snapshot in the list reveals its text in the lower part of the
inspector.

• Restore an older version of your text by selecting the version you want from the
list and clicking on Roll Back at the top (at which point, you will be given the
option of taking another snapshot of your current version).

Note: You can immediately tell which documents have snapshots associated with them because
their icons have dog-eared corners.

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To see what’s changed in the document since the snapshot was taken, click on
“Compare”. Try that now:

Type some text on the line below (anything you want):

Delete the text in the following line:

DELETE ME!

Now:

• In the inspector, select the snapshot you took a moment ago.

• Click “Compare”. See what happens?

⁃ Text that has been added to the document since the snapshot was taken
appears underlined and in blue.

⁃ Text that has been deleted appears struck out and in red.

⁃ Note that the comparison only shows textual changes—it does not show
changes to the formatting.

• Click on the left and right arrows at the top of the inspector, next to the three
dots button, to navigate between the changes.

Tip: You can alter the granularity (level of detail) of the comparison by clicking on the three dots
button next to “Compare” (which should now read “Original”, because clicking on it again will turn
off the compare feature). Changing the granularity will give different results for different
documents, depending on the scope of the edits.

You can also compare the differences between snapshots by selecting a snapshot in the
list and clicking on Compare to reveal the subsequent changes made after the selected

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snapshot was taken.

Let’s move on to “Comments & Footnotes”.

Now we’ll look at the “Comments & Footnotes” tab—don’t worry about clicking on the
button in the inspector header bar just yet, though.

Click on the yellow highlighted text in the sentence below:

This sentence has a comment attached.

Note how the inspector automatically switches to the Comments & Footnotes tab, and
the comment associated with the text gets highlighted.

Next, click on the grey footnote directly below the comment in the inspector.

This sentence has a footnote attached1.

See how clicking on the note in the inspector automatically selects the text associated
with it in the editor?

If you click on a note in the inspector, the editor automatically scrolls the text to where
the note is located. Try scrolling to the bottom of this document, and then clicking the
comment in the inspector to return to the top.

Tip: If the comments aren’t open in the inspector and you don’t want to show them, Alt+Click on a
comment or footnote to open it in a popover instead of in the inspector.

Adding Comments and Footnotes

Let’s try adding some comments and footnotes of our own. First, select some of the text
in the following sentence:

Select some of the text in this sentence.

Next, do one of the following:

• Click on the arrow to the right of the paperclip icon in the toolbar and select Add

1 This is a footnote. For footnotes to be exported properly, it’s important to add them in such a way that
the link ends exactly where you want the footnote to appear in the text.

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 Comment from the menu that appears.

• Click the comment icon in the “Comments & Footnotes” bar of the inspector.

• Go to Insert > Comment in the main menu (or hit Shift+F4). A new comment will
be created in the inspector ready for editing.

Then:

• Add some text.

• Hit the Escape key to return the focus to the editor.

You add footnotes in exactly the same way, but choosing Footnote in the menu or
clicking the “cf” icon in the inspector.

Note: It doesn’t matter where you attach comments, but with footnotes you should always ensure
that the footnote link (the grey highlight) ends at the place you want the footnote number to
appear when printed or exported.

Changing the Colour of Comments

To change the colour of a comment:

1. Right-click on a comment in the inspector.

2. Select a colour from the menu that appears.

(You cannot change the colour of individual footnotes, which are differentiated from
comments by all being grey2.)

The contextual (right-click) menu also allows you to convert comments to footnotes and
vice versa, and to revert comments and footnotes to use default formatting (which can
be set in the “Editing” tab of the Options).

Tip: If you have a lot of comments, you can collapse individual comments and footnotes by clicking
on the disclosure chevron (the downward-pointing arrow) in the top-left of each comment box.

Right, that’s the inspector covered! Now let’s take a look at composition mode. By now,
you know the drill: click on “Composition Mode” in the binder.

Composition mode blocks everything else out so that it’s just you and your words. To

2 You can choose a different colour for footnotes via the “Appearance” tab of Scrivener’s Options.

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enter composition mode, try one of the following:

• Click on the square, grey icon next to the blue inspector icon in the toolbar.

• Press the function key: F11 on the keyboard.

• Go to View > Composition Mode.

Here’s what you need to know about composition mode:

• When you move the mouse to the bottom of the screen, a control bar appears.
This allows you to change the text zoom, the position and width of the virtual
paper, and fade the background in and out. It also has buttons to bring up the
keywords dialog and inspector.

• You can customise the look of composition mode in the “Appearance” tab of the
Options. By default, the regular text colour is overridden to appear as white on a
dark grey-blue background, but you can change this to use black-on-white,
green-on-black or anything you want.

• You can set a background image for composition mode via Project > Project
Settings…

• The keyboard shortcuts Alt+Shift+Up and Alt+Shift+Down navigate to the

previous and next document in the binder, and Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+] navigate back
and forth through the document history.

• Hit Escape to leave composition mode (or use the button on the right in the
control bar).

Okay, let’s leave composition mode now (hit Escape).

Your orientation is now complete! Let’s move on to the organisation tools. To access the
next section, we’re going to do something a little different—be sure to read all of the
instructions below before following them:

1. Click on the “Get Organised” folder. Upon so doing, this editor will be replaced by
the corkboard—a number of index cards against a light brown background.

2. Once the corkboard appears, in the toolbar, click on the corkboard icon (the
centre icon in the group of three next to the search field) to turn it off. Once
you’ve done that, the corkboard in the editor should be replaced with text, and
the control in the toolbar should look like this, with no section selected:

15
Off you go!

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The document you are reading now is a folder. As mentioned, there’s no significant
difference between text and folder documents. The differences are as follows:

1. They have different icons: folder icons are blue, and text document icons are
white rectangles.

⁃ Note that the folder icon for this document (“Get Organised”) has a
little text icon in its corner. This signifies that this folder contains text—
this text. (The text icon has nothing to do with the folder having text
documents inside it, such as “Splitting the Editor” and so on—it means
that this folder document itself contains text.)

2. By default, folders and text documents open in different view modes in the
editor. As you saw, this folder opened in corkboard mode before you turned the
corkboard off.

We’ll come to this second point shortly—first, though, let’s look at how you can view
more than one document at the same time.

Select “Splitting the Editor” in the binder (you may need to expand “Get Organised” by
clicking on the disclosure chevron next to it). Or go get a cup of tea and a biscuit and
come back here when you’re ready—I’ll wait!

When working on a long piece of writing, you may want to refer to research or other
parts of the manuscript. In Scrivener, you can split the main editor into two and have
different documents (or the same document) open in each.

Let’s try that now by going to View > Editor Layout > Split Horizontally.

Alternatively, click on the button in the right of the editor header view (the square with
the horizontal line through its middle):

This document is now displayed in two panes.

Note:

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 • Through the View > Editor Layout menu, you can switch to a vertical (side-by-
side) split or remove the split to return to a single editor.

• Alt-clicking on the split button in the header view toggles between horizontal
and vertical split mode.

• Clicking on the split button in the header view when there is a split removes the
split, returning to single editor mode.

Now let’s load a different document in one of the editors:

Select any document in the binder, and it will be shown in the editor that currently
has the focus. (You can tell which editor currently has the focus because when there is a
split, the header bar of the focussed editor turns blue.)

You can also drag a document from the binder to the header view of the editor in which
you wish to view it. Let’s do that now:

1. Make sure that this document, “Splitting the Editor”, is visible in the bottom
pane.

2. Drag “Sunset” from inside the “Research” folder onto the header view of the top
pane.

You can use the split view to view any two documents in Scrivener alongside one
another, allowing you to refer to a text, PDF, image or media document in one editor
while typing in another.

Try loading different documents into the other editor now. Remember, you can do this
in two ways:

• Drag a document from the binder to the header view of the other editor.

• Click into the editor you want to use so that its header turns blue, and then select
a document in the binder.

Tip: Double-clicking on the central divider will resize the two editors so that they are of equal
height or width.

Before moving on, let’s close the other editor. Do this by clicking on the square button
next to the up/down arrows in the right of the header view above this editor. (Clicking
this button when there is already a split tells Scrivener to get rid of the split and remove
the other editor.)

Next, click on “Editor View Modes”.

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Scrivener’s editor has four possible modes—four different ways of viewing your work.
Learning how and when to switch between them will make your Scrivener experience
much more productive. You switch between these modes using the View Mode control
in the toolbar, which looks like this:

Why are there only three icons if there are four view modes, I hear you ask? Good
question! Here’s why:

• When you are viewing a single document that has no subdocuments (that is, a
document that is not a group or folder with other documents inside it), there are
only three modes.

• An extra mode (called “scrivenings”) is available for groups.

• When you are viewing a group, the fourth mode is accessed by turning off the
other modes (just as you turned off the corkboard to see the text associated with
“Get Organised” not long ago).

That’s going to make a lot more sense if we go through the modes!

1. Single Document Mode

In single document mode, the editor shows the content of the current document. So, if
you’re looking at a text document (or folder), you’ll be looking at its text; for an image
document, single document mode shows the actual image. The editor is in single
document mode right now. In this mode, the view mode control in the toolbar looks like
this:

Note how the leftmost icon shows a single page, and that it’s selected.

2. Corkboard Mode
In corkboard mode, the editor shows the subdocuments of the current document as
index cards on a corkboard. Let’s take a look at how that works right now:

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 • Select the “Get Organised” folder in the binder, and then click on the corkboard
icon (the middle button) in the view mode control to select it:

Once you’ve taken a look at the corkboard, return here. See how the
subdocuments of the folder you selected appeared as index cards?

(You might also note how the icon in the left button changes to show two pages
rather than one page when viewing a group—we’ll get to that presently.)

• Next (after you’ve read this bit, so you know how to get back), click the
corkboard icon again, but this time while viewing the document you are reading
right now. You will see that the corkboard is blank. This is because this
document (“Editor View Modes”) doesn’t contain any subdocuments—but it
could: you could drag documents into the blank corkboard or add some using
the “+” button.

• Click the text icon on the left of the view mode control to see the text of this
document again:

3. Outliner Mode
Like corkboard mode, outliner mode shows the subdocuments of the current document,
but it presents them as rows with various columns of information. Try repeating
everything you did for the corkboard mode above, but this time, instead of selecting the
corkboard icon, click the outliner icon on the right (and remember to come back here
afterwards):

4. Scrivenings Mode
“Scrivenings” is the term for Scrivener’s combined text mode. It allows you to view or
edit multiple text documents as though they were a single document. Scrivenings mode
is available in the following circumstances:

1. When a group is selected in the binder (a folder or any document containing

subdocuments).

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 2. When more than one document is selected in the binder. (You can select multiple
documents by holding down the Shift or Ctrl keys.)

If you look at the view mode control in the toolbar at the moment, you will see that the
left-most icon shows a single sheet of paper. This indicates that scrivenings mode is not
available here, because you are viewing a single document that has no subdocuments.
So, let’s look at one that does.

After reading this next part so that you know what to do, once more click on “Get
Organised” in the binder. You will notice that the “View Mode” icon in the toolbar
changes.

The single text icon on the left has now changed into two pieces of paper, representing a
stack. This shows that it is possible to enter Scrivenings mode.

Let’s try that now: after clicking on “Get Organised” in the binder:

1. Click on the scrivenings group mode icon (the two pieces of paper).

2. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the editor, glancing at the text it
contains.

3. Return here either by clicking on “Editor View Modes” in the binder or by hitting
the back button.

Done that? You should have seen that the text from all the various subdocuments of the
“Get Organised” folder—including this one—were presented as a single, continuous
document, with dividers marking the boundaries between them. You can edit text in
Scrivenings mode just as you can when text documents are viewed in isolation.

Note: When you selected the “Get Organised” folder again, it opened in outliner mode because
Scrivener remembers which mode you last used to view a group. Whenever you change the group
mode, the new mode will automatically be used for groups until you change it again.

View Modes and Selections

You’ve now switched between all the main view modes. The main thing to remember is
that the view modes available depend on what has been loaded into the editor from the
binder:

• When one document with no subdocuments is loaded into the editor, there are
three view modes available:

⁃ Single document mode (view the document content, such as its text).

⁃ Corkboard mode.

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 ⁃ Outliner mode.

• When a folder or a document with subdocuments is loaded into the editor, there
are four view modes:

⁃ Scrivenings mode.

⁃ Corkboard mode.

⁃ Outliner mode.

⁃ Single document mode. In this case, you access single document mode by
turning off the other view modes—that is, by clicking on the selected
button in the view mode control to deselect it.

• When multiple documents are selected in the binder (by Shift or Ctrl-clicking on
them), there are three view modes available:

⁃ Scrivenings mode. (In this case, single document mode is not available
because the editor is not displaying a single document.)

⁃ Corkboard mode.

⁃ Outliner mode.

Tip: You can also switch between view modes using the top three items in the View menu, or using
the Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2 and Ctrl+3 keyboard shortcuts.

I know, I know—now you really do need that cup of tea, and probably another biscuit
too. Once you’re done, now that you know how to switch between view modes, let’s take
a closer look at them. Click on “The Corkboard” when you’re ready.

The corkboard shows the immediate subdocuments of the selected document. To see
this in action:

1. Split the editor again by going to View > Editor Layout > Split Horizontally (or
using the button in the editor header view).

2. Click on the “Draft” folder in the binder to load it in the top editor.

3. Make sure the corkboard is selected in the view mode control in the toolbar.

Note how the corkboard in the top editor now shows the three folders, “The Basics”,
“Going Further” and “Tips”, represented as index cards. If you look in the binder, you
will notice that these three folders are the immediate subdocuments of the Draft folder
—that is, they are only indented one level deeper than the Draft folder.

22
Note: Index cards on the corkboard show the title and synopsis of each document. If a document
does not have a synopsis associated with it, the first lines of its text will be displayed in grey
instead.

Next, in the corkboard, double-click on the yellow book icon in the second card. This will
drill down to show the contents of the “Going Further” folder on the corkboard.

You can edit the synopsis or title in a card by double-clicking into it, and you can drag
the cards around (and into the binder) to reorder your documents. (If you try this out in
the tutorial, be sure to put them back into their original order afterwards!)

Now click on the “Research” folder in the binder. Note how media files such as images
are displayed as photographs on the corkboard rather than as index cards (although
you can change this behaviour via the Options).

Tip: If the inspector is open, it will show information for the currently selected document in the
corkboard (or outliner). If nothing is selected, information will be shown for the container
document.

Corkboard Options
Now click on the Get Organised folder to return to a corkboard with standard text
documents. You can change settings such as the number of cards in a row and their
width by clicking on the button showing an icon of four index cards in the right of the
footer bar:

• Other view options are available from the View > Corkboard Options menu.

• Show status stamps on cards (diagonal stamps indicating the status of each
document) by going to View > Corkboard Options > Status Stamps.

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 • Tint cards with label colours by going to View > Use Label Color In > Index
Cards.

• Right-clicking on selected cards brings up a contextual menu, allowing you to

change the label and status of the documents associated with those cards.

There’s a whole lot more you can do with the corkboard, so once you feel at home in
Scrivener, be sure to come back and check out the corkboard section in “Going Further”
(or have a look at the full user manual available from the Help menu).

For now, though (after a stretch of the legs, a glass of wine, a good curse at the prolixity
of this tutorial’s author, whichever helps), let’s move on to the outliner. To do so, make
sure the focus is in the bottom editor (by clicking into it if necessary), and then select
“The Outliner” in the binder.

The outliner allows you to see sections of the binder in more detail. It works like the
binder, showing an indented list of documents that can be expanded and collapsed, but,
unlike the binder, it can show synopses and other information—as the name suggests,
it’s a great way of working with an outline of your manuscript. Let’s take a look at it:

1. Click into the upper editor tab (which should still show the corkboard) so that it
receives the focus (its header bar turning blue), and then click on the “Draft”
folder in the binder.

2. Select the “Outliner” segment of the view mode control in the toolbar.

The upper editor now shows an outline of all items contained inside the Draft folder
(because that is what we selected in the binder). Click on a disclosure chevron next to
one of the folders to reveal more documents (or Alt-click on a disclosure chevron to
open all subfolders inside the folder).

Using the Outliner

• The “Title and Synopsis” column shows (surprise, surprise) the title and synopsis
of each document.

⁃ Double-click into a title or synopsis to edit it.

• If a document has no title and no synopsis, the first lines of its text will be
displayed. If there is no text, “Untitled Document” placeholder text will be
shown.

⁃ Double-click into the placeholder to add a title.

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 ⁃ Hit return to add a synopsis after you have typed the title.

⁃ If you only want a synopsis and no title, hit return as soon as you double-
click into the row, to leave the title area blank.

• If a document has a title but no synopsis, only the title will be shown.

⁃ In this case, to add a synopsis, double-click the title to edit and hit return
at the end of the title to start typing a synopsis.

• If a document has a synopsis but no title, only the synopsis will be shown.

⁃ In this case, when you double-click into the synopsis to edit it, a blank title
line will appear above the synopsis so that you can add a title if you wish.
When you finish editing, if you didn’t add a title, the title line will
disappear again.

• You can drag, drop and remove documents just as you can in the binder.

• You can move items around using the keyboard shortcuts found in the Edit >
Move menu.

Tip: The button on the right of the outliner footer bar (showing an icon of three dots and lines)
allows you to show and hide synopses.

Outliner Options
Determine which columns are shown by clicking on the “>” button in the top-right of the
outliner title bar, or via the View > Outliner Options menu. The outliner can show as
much or as little information as you want.

Outliner columns can be sorted by clicking into the column header, cycling through
ascending, descending, and no sorting.

Right, on to scrivenings mode—make sure the focus is in the bottom editor again (by
clicking into it if necessary) and then select “Scrivenings” in the binder.

The whole point of Scrivener is to make working on a long text easier by allowing you to
break it up into smaller pieces. Sometimes, however, you will want to see how those
smaller pieces fit into the greater whole. This is where “Scrivenings” mode comes in.

25
There are two ways of entering Scrivenings mode:

1. Select a folder or group in the binder that contains text subdocuments and use
Scrivenings mode to view all of the documents inside the folder as though they
were a single text document. (Note that the text of the folder itself is also
included at the top.)

2. Select multiple documents in the binder and use Scrivenings mode to view them
as though they were a single document.

We already tried (1) when we were looking at “Editor View Modes”, so let’s try viewing
multiple documents this time:

1. Click into the outliner in the top editor so that the top editor gets the focus (its
header bar turning blue again).

2. Click on “START HERE” at the top of the binder.

3. With the Ctrl key on the keyboard held down, click on “Editor View Modes” and
“Scrivenings”, so that all three documents get selected.

4. Click on the Scrivenings mode icon in the view mode control in the toolbar (the
leftmost icon in the control, showing the two pieces of paper). All three
documents will now be loaded into the editor as a single text.

5. Click the scrivenings contents button that appears in the right of the header bar:

6. Select “Scrivenings” from the list that appears—the text will scroll down to this
document.

7. Type something in the following line:

Type something here!

Take a look in the bottom editor—you’ll see the edits you made in scrivenings mode are
reflected there, too.

Note: In Scrivenings mode, the inspector displays information about the section of text you are
currently editing.

So that you can see where one document ends and the next begins, there is a dashed,
horizontal dividing line between sections, but if you prefer you can also display the

26
document titles above each section by selecting View > Text Editing > Show Titles in
Scrivenings from the menu.

Tip: You cannot make textual or formatting edits across document boundaries.

So, if you were writing a novel, you could write each scene of a chapter in isolation and
then view and edit the whole chapter by selecting the chapter folder and entering
Scrivenings mode.

We can get rid of the split now. To do so, click on the button in the right of the header
bar for this editor:

That’s it for “Get Organised”—if you’re still with me, then by now you know almost
everything you need to be productive with Scrivener. Next we’ll look at how you get
your work out of Scrivener. Ensure the “Get It Out There” folder is expanded and then
select “Section Types” in the binder.

27
Scrivener is designed to be flexible, allowing you to organise your writing however you
want. You grow your manuscript in the Draft folder in sections as small or large as you
like, using whatever structure you feel works best. When you are ready to get your
manuscript out there for other people to read, you “compile” the contents of the Draft
folder into a single exported or printed document.

Before we get to the Compile feature, however, we are presented with a problem: given
that you can arrange your manuscript however you want, how can Scrivener know what
each section is supposed to be, or how it should be formatted or arranged in the final
manuscript? How can it know the difference between a title page and an introduction?

Or, suppose you decide to break up a novel by using a folder for each chapter, with text
documents inside those folders each representing a scene. How does Scrivener know
that your folders represent chapters and your text documents represent scenes?

The answer is that you tell Scrivener what each piece is using Section Types. Specifically,
you would:

1. Create section types in your project for “Title Page”, “Introduction”, “Chapter”
and “Scene”.

2. Ensure each document has the appropriate section type applied.

3. When compiling, tell Scrivener how to format each section type (we’ll cover that
in the next section).

Let’s see how section types work in practice:

1. Ensure the inspector is open and select the Metadata tab (the third button in the
header bar, the one with the tag icon).

2. Under “General Metadata”, you will see a “Section type” pop-up menu.

3. Clicking on the down-arrow beside it, you will find the following options:

⁃ Structure-based: Tells Scrivener that the current document should use the
default section type based on its indentation in the binder (we’ll look at
this in a moment).

⁃ Project-specific types: “Heading” and “Text” are the only two section types
specifically set up for this project—we’ll edit them in a moment.

⁃ Edit: brings up the Project Settings panel so that we can edit the section

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 types.

Note that this document’s section type is displayed as “Text” in grey italics. The grey
italics indicate that this document is using the “Structure-based” setting, and that the
default section type for the current document is “Text”. If we wanted, we could change it
explicitly to “Heading” or “Text” using the pop-up menu.

Defining Section Types

The above is all a little abstract. It will make much more sense if we think about this in
terms of the current binder and set up some custom section types ourselves. Take a look
at the contents of the Draft folder in the binder:

• The three folders at the top level of the Draft folder are “The Basics”, “Going
Further” and “Tips”—the three folders that use custom yellow icons (by “top
level”, I mean the ones that are indented the least). The way I’ve organised this
tutorial, each of these folders represents a major part of the Draft.

• The blue folders inside the three top-level folders—folders such as “Get
Oriented”, “Get Organised” and so on—are essentially chapters.

• The text documents inside the blue folders each represent a different section
inside a chapter.

So, the way I have organised the Draft for this tutorial is by parts, chapters and sections.
Let’s set up the section types of this project to reflect that.

Tip: You can open these instructions in a separate window so that you can read them while the
Project Settings panel is open by clicking on the yellow pencil button in the toolbar. This opens a
“Quick Reference” window which you can place alongside the main project window. If there isn’t
room on your screen for both windows, go to Window > Float Quick Reference Panels. This will
ensure the Quick Reference window floats over the top of the main project window.

1. In the main menu, go to Project > Project Settings… and make sure “Section
Types” is selected in the list on the left of the window that appears.

2. In the “Section Types” tab, double-click into “Heading” and change its title to
“Part”.

3. Do the same for “Text”, renaming it to “Chapter”.

4. Click the “+” button to add a third section type and name it “Section”. (Note that
you can use the chevron buttons on the right to reorder the section types in this

29
 list, but we’ll leave this order as-is.)

5. Click “OK”.

Now click on the section type pop-up menu in the inspector again. You’ll see that where
before there were options for “Heading” and “Text”, there are now options for “Part”,
“Chapter” and “Section”, which makes much more sense for our project.

Defining Default Section Types by Structure

There’s a problem, however: this document is shown as being a “Chapter” rather than a
“Section”. One way we could fix this would be to override the setting manually. Try that
now:

1. Click on the arrow to the right of the section type pop-up menu in the inspector.

2. Change the setting to “Section”.

Great! Except… It’s going to be a pain to change that setting for every single text
document in the binder. Fortunately, we don’t have to. Let’s change it back again:

1. Once more, click on the section type pop-up.

2. Change the setting to “Structure-Based”. (It will change back to “Chapter” in

italicised text.)

“Structure-Based” means: Use a default section type based on the indentation of this
document in the binder. But how does Scrivener pick a section type based on
indentation? That’s something you teach it in the Project Settings again:

1. Open the Project Settings from the main menu again.

2. This time, select the “Default Types by Structure” tab at the top and then click on
“All folders”. As soon as you do, you’ll notice that many folders in the binder are
highlighted yellow.

3. Try clicking on the three rows—“All folders”, “All file groups” and “All files”. As
you do so, different documents will be highlighted yellow in the binder.

The yellow highlights show which documents are affected by the selected setting. So,
when you select “All folders”, all folders are highlighted yellow, for instance. Now let’s
change the default settings:

1. Leave “All folders” as it is for now (so that the “Section Type” is set to “Part”).

2. Change the section type for “All file groups” to “Section”. (A file group is a text
document containing other text documents.)

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 3. Change the section type for “All files” to “Section”.

4. Click “OK”.

We just told Scrivener that all folders are parts and all text documents are sections. If
you look over in the inspector again, you’ll see that the section type for this document
now correctly reads “Section”. If you click on any other text document, you’ll also see the
section type set as “Section”. If you click on a folder, such as “The Basics” or “Get
Oriented”, you’ll see the section type set as “Part”.

But wait, we don’t want all folders to be parts—only the top-level folders in the Draft
(the ones using custom yellow icons) should be parts. The folders inside them (one level
deeper) should be chapters. Let’s fix that:

1. Open Project Settings again to the “Default Types by Structure” tab.

2. Click on “All folders” to select it.

3. Click the “+” button (the one with two lines next to it).

4. Note how “All folders” changes to “Root folders” and another row is added
entitled “Level 1 folders and deeper”.

5. Click the “+” button again.

6. A “Level 2 folders and deeper” row will be added.

7. Try selecting the different folder settings—“Root folders”, “Level 1 folders” and
“Level 2 folders and deeper”—and take notice of what gets highlighted in the
binder. You’ll see that the Draft folder is a “root folder”, the yellow folders are at
“level 1”, and the folders using regular blue icons are at “level 2”.

8. Change the section type for “Level 2 folders and deeper” to “Chapter”.

9. Click “OK”.

Now try clicking on “The Basics” and “Get Oriented” in the binder again, taking note of
the section type for each in the inspector, before returning here. Scrivener now knows
how our binder is structured, and what each level represents. This means that, from
now on, we’ll only need to change the section type in the inspector for the occasional
document that we want to be different.

Note: When you create a new project based on one of the templates, such as the novel templates,
the section types are all set up for you (although you now know how to edit them should you so
wish).

These section types are going to come in handy when we compile the Draft, which is
what we’ll move on to now…

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We’ve seen that one of the key concepts of Scrivener is that you work on your
manuscript in pieces, but this wouldn’t be much use if you couldn’t put Humpty together
again. That’s where Compile comes in: you write your manuscript in the Draft folder,
and when you’re ready to share it with the world, you “compile” it into a single file.
Compiling doesn’t affect the original documents inside Scrivener—they all stay as they
were in the Draft folder—it simply copies them into a combined text in the form of an
ebook, a PDF file, a Word file, a print-out, or whatever format you choose.

Note: This section covers compiling your documents into a single file for export or print. You can
also export or print individual documents separately using File > Print Current Document… or File
> Export > Files…

Let’s try compiling the tutorial:

1. From the main menu, select File > Compile…

2. Make sure “Default” is selected under “Formats” on the left and “PDF” is selected
next to “Compile for” at the top.

3. Click “Compile”.

4. Enter a file name and click “Save”.

A PDF document will be created. Open it, then scroll through it, and you will see that it
contains everything you have read so far and more—everything in the Draft folder
compiled into a single text.

Using Compile Formats

In the PDF we just produced, the text looks exactly the same as it does in Scrivener’s
editor. What if you need to generate a manuscript using standard formatting (e.g.
Courier 12-point) to send to your editor, though? Or what if you want to create a
paperback for self-publishing?

With traditional word processors, you would need to go through and reformat your
entire manuscript for every format you wanted to create—changing the font and
paragraph settings and so on. In Scrivener, there’s no need for any of that. You write
using whatever font and format you like looking at on the screen, and then you tell
Compile to change the formatting in the final document. You do this by choosing a
Compile Format from the list on the left of the Compile dialog.

Let’s compile the tutorial into standard manuscript format, then:

32
 1. Go to File > Compile… again.

2. This time, select “Manuscript (Courier)” in the “Formats” list.

3. Click “Compile” enter a file name and click “Save”, then open the generated
document in your preferred PDF reader.

Huh. Other than a header at the top of the page, that doesn’t look any different from
before—why?

Remember how in the last section we looked at “section types”? We told Scrivener what
all the different parts of our Draft folder were (in the case of this tutorial, parts, chapters
and sections). Well, now we have to tell Scrivener how to lay out each of those section
types.

• Each Compile format consists of a number of “section layouts”.

• Each section layout defines a number of settings that can be applied to a

document in the Draft, such as whether the font face and size should be changed,
whether there should be a page break before it, and so on.

• You apply a section layout to each section type in your project to tell Scrivener
how to format your manuscript.

Let’s tell Scrivener how to format the parts, chapters and sections in our tutorial:

Tip: You can open these instructions in a separate window so that you can read them while the
Compile dialog is open by clicking on the yellow pencil button in the toolbar. Be sure to move the
Quick Reference window to the side of the screen so it does not cover the compile dialog. This
opens a “Quick Reference” window which you can place alongside the main project window,
scrolled to show the instructions below. (Once the compile dialog is open, it is not possible to
interact with the QR window so it cannot be scrolled or closed if it is covering the compile dialog.)
If there isn’t room on your screen for both windows, go to Window > Float Quick Reference
dialogs. This will ensure the Quick Reference window floats over the top of the main project
window.

1. Open Compile again. (Note that “Manuscript (Courier)” will still be selected.)

2. Click on “Assign Section Layouts” at the bottom of the central “Section Layouts”
area.

⁃ A window will appear. On the left is a list of the section types defined in
the project (“Part”, “Chapter” and “Section”); on the right is a list of
section layouts defined in the current Compile format, along with a
preview of how each section layout will make your text look.

3. Select “Part” in the list on the left.

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 4. Select the “Part Title” section layout on the right.

⁃ You have just told Scrivener that, when using the “Manuscript (Courier)”
Compile format, documents or folders in this project that have the “Part”
section type applied should use the “Part Title” section layout during
Compile.

5. Select “Chapter” on the left.

6. Select the “Chapter with Title” section layout on the right.

7. Select “Section” on the left.

8. Select “Section Text” on the right.

9. Click “OK”.

10. Click “Compile”, and again open the results in your preferred PDF reader.

You will now see that the font and formatting throughout the document has been
altered—it now uses Courier 12-point and parts and chapters start on a new page with
a title at the top.

Choose different Compile formats to apply different formatting—for instance, the

“Paperback (5.06" x 7.81")” format will create a manuscript suitable for submitting to
CreateSpace.

Note: You can compile to many different file formats (e.g. Word, ebook) by changing the “Compile
for” setting at the top of the Compile dialog. Which Compile formats are available will depend on
the file format selected.

Compile Settings
• On the right of the Compile dialog is a list of the documents that will be compiled.
Here you can un-tick any documents you don’t want included and change the
section types.

• Other options are available by clicking on the buttons in the header bar above
the contents list. The options available vary according to the selected file format.

• At the bottom of the contents list are options for adding front and back matter.
Here you can select a folder contained outside of the Draft folder, the contents of
which will be added either to the front or back of the manuscript. These settings
are saved per-Compile format, so that you can have different front and back
matter for different formats.

⁃ The lock button next to these options locks the front or back matter folder
to the current file format (as selected next to “Compile for”). You won’t
normally need to use this, unless you want different front and back

34
 matter settings for different file formats when using the same Compile
format. (For instance, you might want different front matter for the ePub
and Kindle versions of your ebook when using the “Ebook” Compile
format.)

• You can override the font used throughout by using the “Font” pop-up menu at
the top of the “Section Layouts” area.

Tip: If you hold down the Alt key on your keyboard, the “Compile” button in the Compile dialog
changes to “Save” when clicked, allowing you to save the settings without compiling.

Creating Your Own Compile Formats

Scrivener comes with a number of Compile formats built-in. If they don’t provide what
you need, you can create your own, as follows:

1. Click on the “+” button below the Formats list.

2. If you want to create a new format from scratch, select “New Format…”.

3. If you want to base your new format on an existing one, select “Duplicate & Edit
Format…”.

At this point, the entire window changes to present you with a wealth of options. Here
you can name the format, choose where to save it, create your own section layouts,
determine the size of the printed page, set up page headers and footers, override styles,
and much, much more. You have complete control over how your work will look when
compiled.

The gear button above the list on the left allows you to set the file formats that will work
with your Compile format.

We won’t go into all the details of creating your own Compile format here—the chances
are that you will never need to create your own format and will only use the formats
built into Scrivener. For now, it’s only important to know that you can create your own
formats if you ever need to. Refer to the user manual (available from the Help menu) if
you ever decide to get your fingers dirty (or just experiment—you can’t break
anything!).

Okay, we’re about done. Select “Creating a New Project” under “Get Going” (expanding
the latter if necessary).

35
Phew! We’ve now covered all major features of Scrivener. If you haven’t done so
already, then soon you are going to want to create your own project and get writing.
Generally you will want to create a separate Scrivener project for each writing project.
Additionally, each time a project is closed, Scrivener creates a full backup of the project.
Check out Backing Up for details on how to modify the settings to best suit your work
style.

To create a new project:

1. Select New Project… from the File menu. This will open the project templates
chooser panel.

2. Choose a project template from one of the categories (e.g. novel, screenplay,
essay).

3. Click “Create” to specify a location at which to save the project.

Note: Scrivener projects are saved onto your hard drive in a folder with the file extension “.scriv”.
When you create a new project, make sure you know where you are saving it, so that you can
locate it in File Explorer. If you ever move to another computer, you’ll want to make sure that you
back up and copy your .scriv projects to your new computer.

Although the .scrivx file (with the yellow icon) inside the folder is used to open a project, the entire
.scriv folder is the project. Be sure to copy or compress the whole folder when moving the project
or creating a zipped backup.

Before you create your own project though, click on “All Set” in the binder, and let’s
wrap up this tutorial!

One last thing to note before I leave you to it: Scrivener auto-saves your work so you
don’t have to worry about saving manually. Every time you make an edit to the project,
Scrivener schedules a save, which will occur after a couple of seconds of inactivity. You
can, however, force a save at any time by selecting File > Save (Ctrl+S).

And that’s it: you are now all set to start using Scrivener. If you want to go into more
depth or explore a little more, look at the “Going Further” section. I recommend leaving
that until after you’ve been using Scrivener a little, though (or just look through the
topics and read any documents that catch your eye). Alternatively, take a look through
the user manual with Help > Scrivener Manual (F1).

36
Experiment! You should be able to work out most things by playing with the program. If
you have any problems, check out our knowledge base, or take a look at some of our
tutorial videos on our web page:

https://scrivener.tenderapp.com/help/kb

https://www.literatureandlatte.com/videos.php

And of course, if you are still baffled, post a question on the user forums:

https://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum

Likewise, if you encounter any bugs or glitches, no matter how small—please post to the
forums or e-mail us at [email protected].

I hope you enjoy using Scrivener and find it a useful tool, and offer my heartfelt thanks
to you for choosing Scrivener (or considering it) as the tool for your own writing.

The Page is Yours

You are now ready to begin your own project—go to File > New Project to get going.
Happy writing!

37
Remember that you don’t need to read anything in this section to start using Scrivener
—“The Basics” will get you up and running with everything you need to know. Just dip
into this section whenever you feel like learning something else that you can do in
Scrivener.

There are several ways of searching in Scrivener. Most commonly, you’ll use the
following searching methods:

• When you want to open a particular document and you know its title or some
text that appears in its synopsis, use the toolbar search field.

• When you want to search through your entire project for a phrase or word, use
Project Search (the magnifying glass in the toolbar). The binder will be
replaced with a list of search results.

⁃ Select a search result to open it in the editor. Matching phrases or words

will be highlighted.

⁃ To quickly go through the matching phrases, click into the editor and hit
Ctrl+F to bring up the Find dialog. This will automatically be populated
with the current search term. You can then use this to jump through
results in the text without having to scroll through looking for highlights.
Alternatively you can loop through matching phrases in the editor using
the shortcuts F3 “Find Next” and Shift+F3 “Find Previous”.

• To search for a phrase or word in a single document, use the Find dialog (Ctrl+F
or Edit > Find > Find…).

The different search fields are briefly described below.

Toolbar Quick Search Field

The toolbar Quick Search field works like the search field-cum-address bar in a web
browser, in that as you type, it brings up a list of results in a menu beneath it. Clicking

38
on a result opens it in the editor. This searches document titles, synopses and text,
showing the top 10 results for each.

Toolbar Magnifying Glass Button

The magnifying glass button in the toolbar provides quick access to a number of search
tools. Click on the magnifying glass to bring up the Project Search field. Or, click on the
arrow next to it to bring up a menu of other search tools.

Project Search
Project search is the most comprehensive way of searching for something in the
project. It allows you to search for documents containing a particular word, phrase,
label, keyword and more. We already covered how to use this in the section on “The
Binder” when learning “The Basics”. Here are some extra tips:

1. Along with the magnifying glass button in the toolbar, you can also access this
from the menu via Edit > Find > Project Search (Ctrl+Shift+F).

2. Clicking on the magnifying glass in the left of the search field that appears when
using Project Search brings up a menu containing various options. For instance,
here you can choose to search only for keywords, or only for a particular label.

3. Holding down Alt on the keyboard when clicking on the magnifying glass will
allow you to choose more than one option from the “Search In” section. By doing
this you could, for example, search in both synopses and notes but nowhere else.

To close the search results, click on the “X” in the search results header bar:

To hide the search bar, click on the magnifying glass in the toolbar again.

Finding Text in a Document

To find text inside a document, use the Find dialog, which is available from the Edit >

39
Find > Find… (Ctrl+F) or by clicking on the arrow next to the magnifying glass in the
toolbar and choosing “Search in Document”.

Other Find Tools

Other find tools can be found in the Edit > Find menu, such as Find by Formatting,
which allows you to search the text for particular formatting (e.g. italics).

40
As well as being able to split the editor to view more than one document, you can open
documents in their own windows, allowing you to have as many documents in a project
open on screen as you want. We call these windows “Quick Reference” panels, because
you can use them to open, check and edit documents without affecting the main
window.

Let’s start by opening this document in a Quick Reference panel so that we can keep it
open while we open some others:

1. Click the “Quick Ref” icon in the toolbar (the one with the yellow pencil in it).

2. Resize the window that appears as you wish, so that you can still see the main
window behind it.

You should now be reading this document inside the Quick Reference panel. You can
change the label and status associated with a document using the pop-up buttons in the
footer bar of the Quick Reference panel. You can also view the synopsis, notes and other
metadata associated with the document using the pop-up button in the top-right of the
window.

Next, in the main menu, select Window > Float Quick Reference Panels . This makes it so
that Quick Reference panels never disappear behind the main window. Now let’s look at
some other ways of opening Quick Reference panels.

Space Bar
1. Click on “Sunset” in the “Research” folder of the binder.

2. Hit the space bar on the keyboard.

You should now have a second Quick Reference panel open, this one with an image in it.

41
Menu
Go to Navigate > Open Quick Reference > Research > spacewalk_info .

You should now have a PDF file open in a separate window too.

Opening Multiple Panels at Once

Close all of Quick Reference panels you just opened. Once you’ve done that:

• Holding down Ctrl or Shift on the keyboard, select “Sunset” and “spacewalk_info”
in the binder then select Navigate > Open > as Quick Reference.

Both documents will reopen in Quick Reference windows.

Bookmarks
Clicking the bookmark icon in the left of the Quick Reference footer bar opens the
project bookmarks in a sidebar. Clicking on documents in this sidebar opens them in the
Quick Reference editor on the right of the panel.

You can therefore use Quick Reference panels as a way of referencing your project
bookmarks in their own window.

In “The Basics”, we saw that you can split Scrivener’s editor in two to view two
documents alongside one another. However, each of the two editors also has a
“Copyholder” associated with it.

A Copyholder is a secondary editor that can be displayed inside an editor so that you
can refer to another document. It is not a full editor in itself, in that it cannot display the
corkboard, outliner or scrivenings modes; it can only show the content of a single
document.

With two editors open each showing their Copyholders, you can view up to four
documents in the main window at the same time.

Copyholders are opened by dragging a document to an editor header bar with the Alt
key held down, so let’s try that now:

1. Split the editor vertically (View > Editor Layout > Split Vertically).

42
 2. Open another document in the right editor, e.g. by dragging any document from
the binder to its header bar, or by clicking into the other editor and selecting
another document in the binder.

3. Now hold down the Alt key on the keyboard, pick another document and drag it
to the right editor’s header bar.

The right editor will now be split in two, meaning there are now three documents being
shown in the main window. Note how the Copyholder is not as detailed as the main
editor—its header bar is narrow and it has no footer bar.

Tip: Right-click on the Copyholder header bar to bring up a contextual menu that allows you to
change the placement of the Copyholder.

To close a Copyholder, click on the “X” in the right of its header bar. Alternatively, click
on the button left of the “X” to close the Copyholder and simultaneously open its
document in a Quick Reference panel.

43
Styles allow you to save and apply formatting to text. For example, you could create a
“Block Quote” style with an indent and a smaller font than the rest of the text (Scrivener
in fact provides a “Block Quote” style by default).

Scrivener remembers the style associated with a section of text. This way, if you change
the formatting of a style, Scrivener can update all text that uses that style to use the new
formatting.

Applying Styles
To apply a style, do one of the following:

• Select a style from the styles menu in the format bar.

• Right-click on the text and choose the style from the contextual menu that
appears.

• Go to Format > Style in the main menu and choose a style.

• Go to Format > Style > Styles Panel and choose a style from the panel that
appears.

There are two types of style:

1. Paragraph Styles get applied to whole paragraphs, and include paragraph

formatting such as line spacing and indents. They can optionally include
character formatting such as italics and bold, and can also optionally affect the
font family and size.

⁃ Paragraph styles are indicated in menus by a pilcrow icon (¶) .

⁃ Paragraph styles that also include character formatting are indicated by a

pilcrow icon and an “a”.

2. Character Styles get applied only to the selected text. They only include
character formatting such as italics and bold (and optionally the font family and
size). They do not include paragraph formatting such as line spacing and

44
 indents.

⁃ Character styles are indicated in menus by an “a”.

Tip: For body text, it’s generally best to use “No Style”. In Scrivener, unlike in many word
processors, you should apply styles only to text that you want formatted differently from
everything else. If you use styles for everything, even the main body text, then you will make it
harder for Compile to override your formatting for different output requirements.

Creating Styles
To create a new style:

1. Create some text in the editor that uses the formatting you want to save as a
style.

2. Select some of the text.

3. Go to Format > Style > New Style From Selection. A panel will appear.

4. Enter the name of the style.

5. Choose the style type:

⁃ Save character attributes creates a character style.

⁃ Save paragraph style creates a paragraph style that does not include
character formatting.

⁃ Save all formatting creates a paragraph style that includes character

formatting.

6. Choose whether to include the font family and size.

7. Check the other options.

8. Click “OK”.

The style you created is now available for use in the style menus.

Redefining Styles
Sometimes you will want to tweak a style—maybe you realise you want your block
quotes indented further, for instance. To do so, follow all the same steps as for creating
styles above, except that instead of choosing New Style From Selection from the Style
menu, choose Redefine Style From Selection.

45
Once again, go through the various options and click “OK”. (Note that when redefining a
style, you cannot change a paragraph style to a character style or vice versa.) Upon
hitting “OK”, a progress bar will appear while Scrivener goes through the entire project
looking for text that uses this style, updating any found to use the redefined formatting.

Compiling Styles
Compile formats can be set up to override styles to use different formatting. Many of the
Compile formats that are provided with Scrivener (such as “Manuscript (Times)” and
“Paperback”) are set up to override the default styles such as “Block Quote”, “Body”,
“Caption”, “Heading 1” and so on. You can create your own Compile formats that
override styles, too.

You can switch to page layout view to view your text on virtual pages in one of the
following ways:

• Click on the “View” toolbar item and select “Page View”.

• Go to View > Text Editing > Page View in the main menu.

Note that the pages you see on screen may not match what you see when the text is
compiled for print or export. The concept of pages is largely meaningless in Scrivener,
because you work on the different parts of your manuscript in smaller pieces and can
completely change the formatting and insert other elements, such as titles, during the
Compile process. The final arrangement of the pages isn’t known until the text is
compiled into one document.

Thus, unlike traditional word processors where the page layout view shows exactly
what you will see when you print your document, in Scrivener it is just another way of
viewing your text, for writers who just feel more comfortable seeing pages fill up on the
screen.

Revision mode allows you to use a different text colour while editing or revising your
text, without having to change the colour again every time you click into a different part
of a document.

• To enter revision mode, select one of the colours (“First Revision”, “Second

46
 Revision” and so on) from the Format > Revision Mode menu.

• You can set your preferred revision colours in the “Editing” tab of the Options).

• In revision mode, no matter where you click in the text, when you start typing
the text will appear in the chosen revision colour.

Document links work much like web hyperlinks, except that they link to other
documents in the project.

To create a document link:

1. Select the text to which you wish to apply to the text. For instance, try
highlighting “document link” in the next sentence:

⁃ This is a document link.

⁃ (You don’t have to select text. If there is no selection, the title of the linked
document will be inserted with the link applied to it.)

2. Either:

⁃ Go to Edit > Link to Document and choose the document you wish to
reference; Or:

⁃ Drag a document from the binder onto the selected text.

3. Let’s try the latter: drag the “Revision Mode” document onto the text you
selected above.

You can also choose New Link… from Edit > Link to Document to bring up a sheet that
allows you to create a new document to which to link.

Clicking on a document link opens the linked document in the other editor by default,
creating a split if necessary. (Try clicking on the “split” in the previous sentence to see
what I mean).

You can change this behaviour in the “Behaviors” tab of the Options, choosing where
you would like links opened.

When covering “The Basics”, we saw how we could add comments and footnotes to text
that are displayed in the inspector. Another way of adding footnotes and comments is to
insert them inline. The text of inline annotations and footnotes appears right inside your
text (as opposed to inspector comments and footnotes, the text of which is hidden away

47
in the inspector).

Whether you use inspector or inline footnotes and comments is entirely up to you (you
can even use a mixture of both).

Inline footnotes and annotations look like this:

This text has a footnote after it.3

To create an inline note:

1. Select the text you wish to turn into a footnote or annotation.

2. Go to Insert > Inline Footnote or Insert > Inline Annotation in the menu.

You can also choose one of these options with no selection and then start typing.

You can change the colour of an annotation by selecting it and using the Format > Color
dialog or the format bar colour button.

When you export your work, ranges of text defined as footnotes can be turned into end-
of-page footnotes, and ranges of text defined as annotations can be turned into
comments or omitted altogether.

Note: When creating inline footnotes, the grey bubble should start exactly where you
want the footnote marker to appear in the printed or exported text.

You can set three types of word and character count targets in Scrivener:

1. Draft target: the total number of words, characters or pages you wish to write in
your manuscript.

2. Session target: the number of words or characters you wish to write during the
current writing session.

3. Document target: the number of words or characters you wish to write in a

3 This is a footnote. When the text is compiled, exported or printed, this footnote will
be turned into a “real” footnote (or endnote).

48
 particular document.

Draft Target
Anything you type in documents inside the Draft folder counts towards the Draft target.
To set it:

1. Go to Project > Project Targets.

2. Click into the number field beneath the first progress bar.

3. Type the target count.

4. Click onto “words” next to the number and choose “words” or “chars”.

Session Target
To set it a session target:

1. Go to Project > Project Targets.

2. Click into the number field after the second progress bar.

3. Type the target count.

4. Click onto “words” next to the number and choose “words” or “chars”.

5. Click on “Options…”.

6. Click on the “Session Target” tab and go through the options.

⁃ “Reset session count” allows you to choose to have the session count reset
at a particular time every day.

⁃ If “Count text written anywhere in the project” is ticked, the session count
will increase even when typing in documents outside the Draft folder, that
are not part of your final manuscript.

49
 ⁃ You can also choose to have session targets automatically calculated by
setting a deadline date for the Draft target in the “Draft Target” tab and
then ticking “Automatically calculate from draft deadline” in the “Session
Target” tab. When these options are selected, you can also tell Scrivener
on which days of the week you write, so that it can adjust the daily
session target accordingly.

7. Click “OK”.

Viewing the Draft and Session Targets

When a Draft or session target is set, a progress bar appears in the search field in
Scrivener’s toolbar. If both a Draft and a session target is set, the Draft progress bar will
appear at the top of the search field and the session progress bar will appear at the
bottom; if only one target is set, it will appear at the bottom.

Moving the mouse over the search field shows the current Draft and session count.

You can also go to Project > Project Targets… to view the targets in the floating dialog.

Document Targets
To set a document target:

1. In the footer view of a text document, click on the target icon.

2. Set a target in the dialog that appears.

The target button in the footer view will be replaced with a progress bar showing the
current progress for the document. You can click on the progress bar to edit or remove
the target.

Scriptwriting mode is available from Format > Scriptwriting > Script Mode (Ctrl+8).

When in script mode, the footer view will show information on the various available
script elements.

• Select Format > Scriptwriting > Script Mode - Screenplay from the main menu
now.

⁃ The word and character count will disappear and you will see a pop-up
menu appear on the right of the footer view saying “General Text” (this
just means that the currently selected text isn’t recognised as a part of a

50
 screenplay).

• Click into the text on the line below:

Click into this text.

• Try selecting different elements from the pop-up menu on the right of the footer
view.

The above text is automatically reformatted to the script element you select each time.

You can switch between script elements using the tab and enter keys:

• Hitting enter at the end of the line will take you to the next element.

• Hitting tab at the beginning of the line will toggle between different elements.

• For some elements, hitting tab at the end of a line will take you to a different
element on the next line from hitting enter. For other elements, hitting tab might
insert characters.

⁃ For example, hitting tab at the end of a dialogue line will move to a
parenthetical line, whereas hitting tab in a scene heading line will insert a
hyphen, ready for you to type the location.

The footer view updates to show what will happen if you press the tab or enter keys
(which will move you to the next script element).

Note that scriptwriting mode is saved on a document-by-document basis, so you can

switch between documents that use script formatting and documents that don’t.
Documents using scriptwriting mode have a yellow icon to distinguish them from other
text documents.

To turn off script mode, use the Script Mode menu item again, deselecting it.

A number of script formats are provided, such as screenplay, stage play and comic script
formats. You can also create your own via Format > Scriptwriting > Script Settings…

By default, composition mode uses “typewriter scrolling”. With this enabled, newly-
typed text will remain in the vertical centre of the screen so that you don’t have to crick
your neck by looking down all the time.

When you type text in a new document, when there is enough text so that the line you
are typing on would be lower than the middle of the screen, it is automatically scrolled

51
up to keep it centred.

You can turn typewriter scrolling off by going to View > Text Editing > Typewriter
Scrolling (❖+Ctrl+T). Using the same menu command, you can also turn it on for the
editor when not in composition mode.

To test this feature out, enter composition mode ( F11) and type some text inside this
document (ensuring typewriter scrolling is turned on). Do that here, making sure you
type enough text so that it wraps across more than one line:

Your text:

Keep typing so that there is enough text to fill the height of the screen.

Next, try moving the cursor into some text in the bottom quarter of the screen and type.
You’ll see that the typing line stays at the same position.

52
Collections provide a way of keeping different lists of binder documents around. There
are two types of collection:

1. Arbitrary collections. You can add any documents you want to these and drag
and drop to have them in any order.

⁃ Suppose you are reading through your manuscript and realise that a
number of sections have problems in them that you are going to need to
solve. You could create a collection called “Problems” and add any
problematic documents to it. You could then open that collection to work
through the problematic documents.

2. Search collections allow you to save a search and re-run it at any time.

⁃ Suppose you are writing a novel and have used labels to record the point
of view of each chapter. You could set up different search collections for
each point-of-view character. Each search collection would search for the
character name in the label. You could then open one of the collections to
see only the chapters or scenes for a particular character.

Opening Collections
In the toolbar:

• Click on the “View” button on the left.

• Select “Collections”.

⁃ An area will appear at the top of the binder containing three rows (tabs),
“What’s New in Scrivener 3”, “Binder” and “Search Results”.

• Click on the “Search Results” row.

See what happened? The last search you ran gets run again, and its results appear
where the binder was.

Click on the “Binder” tab to return to the binder before continuing.

Arbitrary Collections
To create an arbitrary collection:

53
 • Right-click on this document’s header view document icon to bring up the header
bar menu.

• Select “Lock in Place”:

The header bar will turn pink, indicating that the editor is now “locked”. When an editor
is locked, clicks in the binder will have no effect. Try clicking on different documents in
the binder to see what I mean—they will no longer get loaded into the editor when
selected as they normally do. We have locked the editor so that you can still read this
document while trying out the following steps.

• Hold down the Ctrl key on the keyboard and select several documents in the
binder.

• Once you have selected five or six (it doesn’t matter which), click on “+” button in
the “Collections” bar at the very top of the binder:

The binder will be replaced by a flat list showing only the documents you selected. You
haven’t moved those documents—they are all still in their rightful places in the binder.
No, you’ve just created a collection. When you created it, the selected documents were
automatically added to it.

To see what I mean click on one of the documents in the collection list and go to

54
Navigate > Reveal in Binder, or right-click and select “Reveal in Binder”. This shows you
where the document is located in the binder.

Click back on the collection tab that was created once you’ve tried this, to return to the
collection.

• You can drag and drop the collection rows into any order you want.

• You can drag and drop documents inside the collection list to reorder them. (This
has no effect on the order in the binder.)

• You can rename the collection to anything you want, and you can change its
colour by clicking on the little chevron next to the collection name:

Go ahead and try changing the title and colour of the collection you created.

Let’s add some more documents to the collection:

• Click back on the “Binder” tab and select some different documents in the binder.

• Once you’ve selected some documents, drag and drop them onto the collection
tab.

• The documents you dragged onto the tab are now in the collection too.

55
Search Collections
Let’s create a collection of all documents with their status marked “To Do”:

1. Open project search by clicking on the magnifying glass in the toolbar.

2. In the search field that appears above the binder, search for “To Do”. The binder
will be replaced with the purple search results list.

3. Click on the magnifying glass icon on the left of the search field and select
“Status” from the menu that appears. The search results will update to show
only documents with a status of “To Do”.

4. Click on the the magnifying glass in the search field again, and this time select
“Save Search As Collection…” from the bottom of the menu.

5. Enter a name for the search, e.g. “To Do” (it will use the search phrase by default)
and hit “OK”.

The search results will now change colour and you will see that a new tab has appeared
in the list of collections named “To Do”. Again, you can rename this or change the colour
to one of your choosing, just as you can with arbitrary collections.

Search collections are different to arbitrary collections in that you can’t add documents
to them or move them around. Instead, every time you click on a search collection, the
search gets run again. To see what I mean:

1. Click back on the “Binder” tab.

2. Click on the “START HERE” document at the top of the binder and hit the space
bar to bring up a Quick Reference panel.

3. Click on the “No Status” pop-up button in the bottom-right of the Quick
Reference panel and choose “To Do” from the status menu.

4. Repeat this with a couple of other documents if you like.

5. Now click on the “To Do” collection again.

The “START HERE” document is now part of the “To Do” collection.

Deleting Collections
To delete a collection, simply select its tab and then click on the “-” button in the
“Collections” header bar (you will be prompted to confirm the deletion). Deleting a
collection has no effect on its constituent documents—they are not deleted and remain
in their place in the binder.

56
Closing Collections
You can close a collection and return to the binder at any time by clicking the “X” button
in the left of the collection header bar:

You can now unlock the editor by right-clicking on the editor header bar document icon
again and deselecting “Lock in Place”. You can also hide the collections tab by choosing
“Collections” from the “View” toolbar button menu.

In “The Basics”, we learned about how Bookmarks can be used to store references to
other documents. In this section, we’ll learn how to use them in combination with Quick
Reference Panels as a powerful way of managing project-wide notes.

Note: Be sure to read the section on Quick Reference Panels before reading this section!
You may also want to use Navigate > Editor > Lock in Place to keep these instructions
visible in the editor while you work.

First, we’re going to create a folder in the binder that we’ll use to store project notes:

1. In the binder, select the “Research” folder.

2. Click the “new folder” button in the binder footer bar (the icon of a folder with a
“+” inside it).

57
 3. Name the new folder “Notes”.

4. Ensuring the new “Notes” folder is selected, go to Edit > Move > Move Left. This
will move the folder so that it is on the same level as and directly below the
“Research” folder.

5. If you want, give the folder a custom notebook icon by going to Documents >
Change Icon.

Next, we’ll add some notes to the folder and then add them to the project bookmarks:

1. With the folder selected, click the “+” button in the binder footer to create a
couple of new documents inside it. Name them anything you like, and feel free to
type in them.

2. Select both documents in the Binder, right-click and select “Add to Project
Bookmarks”. This will add them to the project bookmarks list. (Click on the
“Bookmarks” toolbar icon to check that the documents have been added.) You
can also set whether the edited document is bookmarked, in the Documents
menu.

Now we’ll open up a Quick Reference panel and navigate between our notes:

1. Select one of the documents you just created and then click the “Quick
Reference” toolbar icon, so that the document is opened in its own Quick
Reference panel.

2. Click the bookmark icon in the left of the footer bar in the Quick Reference panel.
This will open a sidebar showing all project bookmarks, including the two note
documents you just added.

You can now select documents in the Bookmarks sidebar to navigate between them in
the Quick Reference panel. This is a great way of referring to notes and research in their
own window. And of course, you’re not limited to adding documents only from your
“Notes” folder—you can add documents from anywhere in the project. (You can also
refer to project bookmarks in the inspector, as we saw in “The Basics”.)

To create a new document and add it to the project bookmarks in a single step:

1. Click the “+” button in the footer bar beneath the Bookmarks sidebar of the Quick
Reference window. A dialog will appear, asking you where you want the new
document to be created.

2. From the pop-up menu, choose the “Notes” folder you created earlier, and then
click on “OK”.

⁃ If you tick “Don’t ask again”, from now on when you create a new
document in the Bookmarks sidebar of a Quick Reference panel, you
won’t see this drop-down dialog and the document will automatically be

58
 created in the folder you previously selected. You can change these
settings at any time in the “Special Folders” area of Project Settings
(available from the Project menu).

3. Name the new document.

A new document will be created inside the “Notes” folder, and it will automatically be
added to the Project Bookmarks. You can drag items around in the Bookmarks sidebar
of the Quick Reference panel to reorder them (this only reorders the Bookmarks, and
not the placement of documents in the binder).

Note: Anything you add to the “Notes” folder in the binder will not automatically be added to the
Project Bookmarks, because you can bookmark anything in the project. So if you create notes in
the “Notes” folder in the binder and want them added to the Project Bookmarks, be sure to right-
click on them and add them to the bookmarks from the contextual menu that appears.

Using a Quick Reference Panel in combination with Project Bookmarks is therefore a

great way of creating and keeping track of notes on your project. And you can remove
notes from the Bookmarks list once you’re finished with them while keeping them in the
binder for future reference.

Splitting Documents
Suppose you start out creating a single document for each chapter. Then, after your first
draft, you realise that you want to break your chapters up into smaller sections, so that
you can restructure more easily. No problem.

To split the text of a document into smaller pieces:

1. Click into the text at the point you wish to split it apart.

2. In the main menu, go to Documents > Split > at Selection. The document will be
split in two at the cursor point.

Documents > Split > with Selection as Title works much the same way, except you
select a range of text before using it. The selected text will become the title of the newly-
created document.

Merging Documents
The opposite of splitting documents is merging them. If you have a number of small
documents in the binder that you want to merge into a single document:

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 1. Select the documents you wish to merge in the binder.

2. From the main menu, choose Documents > Merge.

You aren’t limited to displaying the contents of only one group in the corkboard or
outliner—you can show the subdocuments of several groups by “stacking” them. This is
really easy to do:

1. Split the editor horizontally or vertically.

2. Click into the other editor to give it the focus.

3. Select “The Basics” in the binder.

4. Switch to corkboard mode if necessary.

5. Hold down the Ctrl key and click on “Going Further” in the binder.

6. With the Ctrl key still held down, click on “Tips” in the binder.

Now scroll down through the corkboard. Note how the subdocuments of each of the
folders you selected are all displayed on the corkboard, with a dividing line between
each section.

When viewing a stack of groups in the corkboard like this, the footer view shows a
button that allows you to chose whether to display the sections as a grid (the default), in
rows, or in columns:

Try clicking on each of the different options to see how they affect the corkboard.

Now try switching to outliner mode. You’ll see the three groups you selected in the
binder, and you can expand them to view their contents.

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The outliner and corkboard are not only great organisational tools: they can also be
used to navigate, just like the binder, using the “Selection Affects Other Editor” tool:

1. Split the editor if necessary.

2. In the other editor, load any folder and switch to either corkboard or outliner
mode.

Note the button containing an arrow pointing out of a box in the footer bar:

That’s the “Selection Affects Other Editor” button. Click on it now. You will notice that it
turns blue, to indicate that it is on. When this button is on, selecting documents in the
corkboard or outliner will open them in the other editor if there is a split.

Try clicking on one of the documents in the corkboard or outliner, and you will see that
it is opened in this editor (come back here afterwards!). By turning this feature on, then,
you can use the corkboard or outliner to navigate through the other editor.

Click the button again to deselect it (it will turn back grey to indicate that “Selection
Affects Other Editor” has been turned off).

Navigating in Copyholders
Note: be sure to go through the section covering Copyholders in “Referring to More
Documents” before reading this section.

You can use this same button to navigate documents using Copyholders. Try this:

1. Holding down Alt on the keyboard, drag one of the documents in the corkboard
or outliner and drop it onto the header bar above the corkboard or outliner. A
Copyholder split will open within the other editor.

2. Now click on the “Selection Affects Other Editor” button again so that it turns
blue. Then click it a second time. Now that a Copyholder is open, it will remain
blue on this second click, but the icon will change to show the arrow pointing
into the box. This indicates that selection will now be opened in the Copyholder
rather than in the other editor.

3. Now try selecting documents in the corkboard or outliner—see how they get
opened in the Copyholder?

Hopefully you will see how useful this could be. For instance, here’s a setup I use quite

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regularly:

• Binder open on left.

• Editor split vertically.

• Right editor in outliner mode with its Copyholder open at the bottom

• “Selection Affects” button set to affect the Copyholder.

• Navigate > Binder Selection Affects > Left Editor is enabled (so that any clicks in
the binder only affect the left editor).

With this arrangement, I can use the binder to navigate the editor on the left, and the
outliner to navigate the Copyholder below it, arranging and editing my manuscript on
the left while navigating through and referring to research and notes on the right.

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Scrivener’s corkboard is not like a real corkboard: on a real corkboard, you can pin
cards anywhere; in Scrivener, the corkboard is a linear list of of a group’s subdocuments
laid out in rows. However, there is a freeform mode, which allows you to place cards
anywhere and experiment.

You switch between freeform and regular modes using the button on the right of the
corkboard’s footer bar:

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(You can also enter freeform mode by going to View > Corkboard Options > Freeform.)

Try this now:

1. Split the editor if necessary.

2. In the other editor, select a folder in the binder and switch to corkboard mode.

3. Click on the freeform mode button in the footer bar, as indicated in the image
above.

You can now drag cards around and drop them anywhere. (Select multiple cards by
clicking and dragging the mouse to create a marquee rectangle and enclosing the cards
you wish to select.)

Dragging the cards around in freeform mode has no effect on the order of their
associated documents in the binder (unlike in regular mode). If you arrange the cards in
an order you would like to be used in the binder, though, you can click the “Commit”
button in the footer bar and Scrivener will change the order of the documents in the
binder to best fit their arrangement on the freeform corkboard.

Feel free to play around with the cards (but don’t hit “Commit” unless you want to mess
up the order of the tutorial!), and once you have finished, return to regular corkboard
mode by clicking on the grid icon on the left of the button you used to switch to freeform
mode (or go to View > Corkboard Options and deselect Freeform).

In “The Basics”, we covered how coloured labels can be assigned to documents, and how
they can be used for anything. There’s a cool way of viewing labels that we didn’t cover
when looking at the basics, though: labels can be displayed in threads on the corkboard
view. The easiest way to understand how this works is to see it in action:

1. Split the editor if necessary.

2. In the other editor, load the “Writing and Editing” folder under “Going Further”.

3. Switch to corkboard mode. You should see several cards on the board.

4. Either select View > Corkboard Options > Arrange by Label from the main
menu, or click on this button in the footer bar:

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See what happens? Coloured lines appear stretching the width of the corkboard, each
representing a label. Each card is placed on the line that corresponds to the label
associated with its document, in the same order as it appears in the binder.

• Drag cards from left to right to change their positions in the binder.

• Drag cards up and down to change their labels.

• Switch between horizontal and vertical lines using the button in the footer bar.

If you’re writing a novel and use labels to keep track of the point-of-view character or
subplot for each document, this is a great way of viewing all the threads in a group. (And
combined with viewing multiple groups, you could even view threads for the entire
manuscript.)

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Importing Files
To bring in writing and research from other apps:

1. In Scrivener’s binder, select the folder into which you wish to import the new
files. Or, select the file under which you wish the files to be imported. (If you
select a folder, the imported files will be placed inside it as the last items; if you
select a file, imported files will be placed directly beneath it.)

2. Go to File > Import > Files… in the main menu.

3. In the file browser window that appears, select the files that you want to import.

4. Click “Import”.

All selected files will be imported. Imported text files will be converted so that they can
be edited inside Scrivener. All other files will be copied into Scrivener.

Note: If you selected a file contained inside the “Draft” folder in step (1) above, you will only have
the option of importing text file types from the file browser, because the “Draft” folder only
supports text files.

Scrivener can import many different file types:

• Word documents (.docx, .doc), rich text files (.rtf), plain text files (.txt),
OpenOffice documents (.odt), Fountain files (.fountain) and Final Draft files
(.fdx) are imported as text that can be edited inside Scrivener.

• Image, movie, sound and PDF files are copied into Scrivener and can be viewed in
its editor.

• All other files are copied into Scrivener.

Importing Web Pages

You can import web pages by selecting Import > Web Page… from the File menu.

Import and Split

Perhaps you have already written a long document and you want to bring it into
Scrivener and break it up into smaller sections. You could do that by importing it

66
following the steps above and then using the Split at Selection feature. Another option is
to use Import and Split:

1. From the main menu, select File > Import > Import and Split…

2. In the dialog that appears, select the file that you wish to import.

3. In the “Sections are separated by” box, enter the text that represents splits in
your document. For instance, you could enter a couple of return characters, or a
separator character you have used in the text (e.g. “#”).

4. Click “Import”.

Your text will now be imported as multiple documents. Go through them and do any
necessary clean-up. You can split them further using the Split at Selection feature.

There are three ways of getting work out in Scrivener:

1. Compile the Draft folder into a single document for printing or exporting.

2. Print the contents of the current editor using File > Print Current Document…

3. Export individual documents from the binder—this is what we will look at here.

Exporting allows you to get anything you have brought into Scrivener out again, or to
export individual text files to popular word processor formats. To export:

1. In the binder, select all of the files you want to export.

2. From the main menu, select File > Export > Files…

- Tip: Alternatively you can drag and drop binder files to your Windows
Desktop, or into File Explorer.

3. If multiple files were selected, you will be prompted to enter the name of a
directory that will be created in File Explorer to hold the files.

4. Choose your preferred text file format from the pop-up menu next to “Export text
files as”.

⁃ Note: This option is available even if you are only exporting image or
media files. In that case, it only has any effect if you choose to export the
notes associated with such files too.

5. Go through the “Metadata” and “Options” settings.

6. Click “Export”.

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The selected files will be exported with the binder structure intact—folders in the
binder will become folders in File Explorer.

Scrivener is also available for iOS so that you can write and structure while on your
iPhone or iPad. The iOS version is available as a separate purchase from the Apple App
Store. Below we cover how to sync between platforms for those who also own the iOS
version. If you don’t have Scrivener for iPhone or iPad, you can ignore this section.

Setting Up Dropbox on Your PC

You need to store any projects you wish to sync on Dropbox. You can get a free Dropbox
account from https://www.getdropbox.com. You’ll need to download Dropbox and
install it on your PC. Assuming you have Dropbox installed on your PC:

1. Locate any Scrivener projects you want to sync in File Explorer.

⁃ Tip: You can easily locate any project by opening it in Scrivener and then
selecting File > Show Project in File Explorer.

2. Ensure any projects you want to sync are closed. This is very important—if you
leave any projects open in Scrivener while moving them into Dropbox, you could
end up corrupting them and losing data.

3. In File Explorer, open another window ( File > Open new window in File Explorer
menu) and open your Dropbox folder in it (select “Dropbox” in File Explorer
sidebar).

4. Create a folder in which to store the projects you wish to sync with iOS. To sync,
you must have a folder on Dropbox that you use only for sharing Scrivener
projects between devices. The standard folder that the iOS version uses is
\Apps\Scrivener, so if you want to use that, inside the Dropbox folder you would
create a new folder named “Apps” (if it doesn’t already exist) and then inside
that you would create a folder called “Scrivener”. However, you can create and
use any folder you want for this, just as long as you only use it for storing
Scrivener projects. (The reason you should only store Scrivener projects inside it
is that everything in this folder will be synced to your iOS device, so anything
else in the folder would take up unnecessary space on your device.)

5. Move the projects you located in (1) into the folder you created in (4), for
instance by dragging and dropping them.

Note: You must drag and drop the entire .scriv folder, not just the .scrivx file that will be
highlighted when using the Show Project in File Explorer menu

6. At this point, you can reopen the projects (e.g. by double-clicking on them in File

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 Explorer).

When creating a new project, if you want to sync it with iOS, be sure to save it into the
Dropbox folder you created in (4) when asked where to choose a location for the new
project. (If you don’t, you can still move it later using the steps above.)

Setting Up Dropbox on Your iPad or iPhone

Next, open Scrivener on your iPhone and do the following:

1. Tap the “sync” icon at the top of the projects screen and select Link Dropbox. As
long as you have an internet connection, this will bring up the Dropbox sign-in
window, allowing you to sign in to your Dropbox account.

2. Once you’ve signed in, you’ll be asked to choose a folder on Dropbox with which
to sync your Scrivener projects. Be sure to choose the folder you set up in step
(4) of “Setting Up Dropbox on Your PC”.

⁃ Note: You can change this folder at any time by tapping “Edit” in the nav
bar at the top of the projects screen, then tapping the gear icon in the
footer bar that appears and selecting Dropbox Settings.

3. Once you’ve chosen a folder, Scrivener will sync with Dropbox, downloading any
files you have placed in your shared Dropbox folder. Projects stored on Dropbox
will appear in their own section at the top of the projects list.

When you create a new project on iOS, you will be asked where to save it. If you choose
to save it to Dropbox, after you sync, it will automatically appear in the Dropbox folder
you created on your PC, so that you can open the project there, too.

Making Changes to Projects

Now that you have your project on both your PC and iOS device, you need to make sure
it is synced between devices whenever you make changes. Here’s how:

1. On PC, the Dropbox app you downloaded from dropbox.com is always running in
the background. Whenever a file is changed in the Dropbox folder, the Dropbox
app automatically uploads it to the Dropbox servers. Whenever the Dropbox app
detects new files on the Dropbox servers, it automatically downloads them to
the Dropbox folder on your PC. Whenever it is uploading or downloading files, it
shows a “syncing” badge in the Dropbox icon in the taskbar buttons:

Note for Dropbox Pro users: Dropbox now pushes its “Smart Sync” service which does not

69
download files automatically but leaves them on the cloud until explicitly requested; this is
problematic for Scrivener since opening the .scrivx will download only that file. It is recommended
you disable automatic Smart Sync, or otherwise ensure you manually set a new mobile-created
project folder to “local” on your PC and allow it to download before opening it in Scrivener.

2. When you’ve finished editing on your PC and want to open the project on iOS, it
is very important that you wait for the “syncing” badge to disappear from the
Dropbox icon in the taskbar. Only when it disappears have all the files uploaded
to the Dropbox servers. Until then, there is no way for the iOS version to
download all of your changes, so if you don’t wait, you could end up with an
incomplete sync and files missing from your project.

3. Once you’re sure Dropbox has finished syncing on your PC, on your iOS device,
open Scrivener and tap the “sync” icon in the nav bar of the projects screen. A
progress bar will appear while the updated files download.

4. Once the sync has finished, you are ready to open and edit the project on your
iOS device.

5. When you’ve finished making edits on iOS, tap the “sync” icon once again in the
projects screen. (The sync icon is also available in the nav bar while editing
documents inside a project, and in the share button in the footer bar of the
editor.) Once again, a progress bar will appear, this time to indicate that your
changed files are being uploaded to the Dropbox servers. Wait for the sync to
complete.

6. When you return to your PC, if the project is still open, a message should appear
telling you that changes have been made and asking if you want to sync them.
Before clicking to start the sync, though, make sure that the Dropbox app has
finished downloading all the changed files. As you did before syncing on iOS,
check the Dropbox icon in the taskbar on your PC and do not tell Scrivener to
sync the changes until the “syncing” badge has disappeared. Once you are sure
Dropbox has finished syncing, tell Scrivener to sync the changes. The project will
close and reopen automatically, now with all the changes you made on iOS in
place.

⁃ If you don’t see a message telling you that there are changes, you can go to
File > Sync > with Mobile Devices to force Scrivener to look for changes.

⁃ If the project was closed, only reopen it when you are sure Dropbox has
finished syncing. When you open the project, all of the changes you made
on iOS will be there.

Resolving Sync Problems

If your iOS device tells you that a project you downloaded from your PC seems to be
invalid, it is most likely because you didn’t let Dropbox on your PC finish syncing all files
before you downloaded them to iOS. To solve this issue, ensure the Dropbox app has
finished syncing on your PC, and then tap “sync” again on iOS to download the rest of

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the files.

Try not to edit a project on both devices without syncing, as this can lead to conflicts.
For instance, suppose you make some changes on iOS, and then return to your PC and
make some changes to the project without first tapping “sync” in iOS and waiting for
Dropbox to download the changes to your PC. In this case, conflicts will arise. Scrivener
will do its best to resolve such conflicts, but it’s always better to try to avoid this
happening.

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You can assign any file or folder a custom icon via Documents > Change Icon. Some of
the documents in this project have custom icons assigned, such as the folders using
yellow book icons and the “START HERE” document, among others.

To see this feature in action, let’s try setting up another root folder in which we will
store information about characters:

1. Lock the editor so that this document stays on screen (Right-click in the
document icon in the header bar and select “Lock In Place”).

2. Select the “Research” folder in the binder.

3. Click on the “add folder” button in the footer bar at the bottom of the binder.

4. A new folder is created inside the “Research” folder. Rename the new folder
“Characters”.

5. From the Edit menu, choose Move > Left. Your new folder is now a root folder—
that is, it is now as far left as it can go, on the same level as the Draft, Research
and Trash folders.

Our new “Characters” folder looks fairly generic so far, and this is where the custom
icon feature comes in. In our example, we are going to use our new folder to store notes
about different characters in a novel, so we want to assign it an appropriate icon:

1. Select the “Characters” folder.

2. Go to Documents > Change Icon (or Right-click on the folder and select “Change
Icon” from the contextual menu).

3. Choose Characters > Photo (or any icon you want).

If you create a Scrivener project from one of the templates that are provided (such as
the novel template), you will find folders in the binder that have been created and
customised in just this way.

(You can unlock the editor now.)

Note: Make sure you go through the Custom Icons section before reading this section, so
that you have a “Characters” folder set up.

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One of the philosophies behind Scrivener is that it doesn’t force you into a particular
workflow. You can write any sort of long-form text in Scrivener, setting up your project
to fit the task at hand. Therefore, Scrivener doesn’t assume that everyone writing a
novel (for example) uses character sheets to keep track of character information, or
prompt sheets for information about locations. Instead, Scrivener provides the means to
set up “document templates” that can generate items such as character sheets for those
who use them.

Document templates allow you to set up a document in the project and use it as the
basis for creating new documents. Let’s try creating a couple to see how this works.

1. Go to the Project menu and select New From Template. Note how there is just a
dummy menu item in there saying “No templates folder set for project”.

2. Click the arrow next to the green “+” icon in the toolbar. You’ll see there are five
items in there: “New Text”, “New Folder”, “New From Template”, “Existing Files”
and “Web Page” (which will be disabled if a document contained in the Draft
folder is selected in the binder, because you can’t import web pages into the
text-only Draft folder). Don’t select anything—we’re just looking at what’s there
at the moment.

We’re going to add a couple of different types of document to these menus.

Next, take a look inside the “Research” folder in the binder (expand it if necessary by
clicking the disclosure chevron next to it). Inside it you will find a “Sheets” folder, which
contains two documents, “Character Sheet” and “Location Sheet”. Take a look at these
documents. They contain text that could be used for very basic character or location
sheets, which you might fill in for each character or location you are going to write
about in a novel.

These documents are just regular text documents—you can type whatever you want in
there. To see what I mean, select the “Location” document and then click on “+” in the
toolbar so that a new blank document gets created. Name it to anything you want, and
then type something inside the document.

Setting a Templates Folder

Now we’re going to tell Scrivener that the documents inside the “Sheets” folder should
be treated as document templates—that is, that we want to be able to create new
documents based on them:

1. Go to Project > Project Settings…

2. Select “Special Folders” in the sidebar.

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 3. Under “Templates Folder”, select the “Sheets” folder from the pop-up menu.

4. Click the OK button.

The icon of the “Sheets” folder will change to be a white “T” against a blueprint
background, and the “T” will also appear in the corner of each document inside it. This
indicates that the folder is now acting as the project’s templates folder and that
anything inside it can be used as the basis for a new document.

What does this mean? Let’s try returning to the menus we looked at a moment ago:

1. Click the “Characters” folder with the custom icon that you created when looking
at Custom Icons. It should currently be empty.

2. Go to the Project menu and select New From Template again. You’ll notice that
it’s no longer empty—it now shows the contents of the “Sheets” templates
folder.

3. From the menu, select “Character Sheet”. A new document will be created inside
the “Characters” folder—a document identical to the “Character Sheet”
document in the templates folder. Change the title and edit the text in the
document itself.

4. Now click the arrow next to the green “+” button in the toolbar. “New From
Template” submenu is available from here as well. This time choose “Location
Sheet”.

The two new documents you just created are copies of the documents in the templates
folder. And that’s really all the templates folder is—somewhere for you to put
documents that you want to use as the basis for other documents, and which, in
combination with the New From Template menu, makes it very easy to create copies of
those documents anywhere you want in the project.

Set Folders to Use Templates by Default

That “Characters” folder we created earlier is there to hold character sheets for all the
characters in our novel. At the moment, every time we want to add a new character
sheet to it, we have to use the New From Template menu. There’s an easier way, though:

1. Select the “Characters” folder in the binder.

2. Go to Documents > Default Template for subdocuments in the main menu.

3. Select “Character Sheet”.

Now try pressing the green “+” button in the toolbar or the “+” button at the bottom of
the binder. See what happens? The “Characters” folder now automatically uses the

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“Character Sheet” template whenever you create a new document inside it, without you
having to use the New From Template menu each time.

Scrivener comes with a range of project templates that can be used as the basis for new
projects. To create a new project from a template:

1. From the main menu, choose File > New Project…

2. In the templates chooser dialog that appears, select a category in the sidebar.

3. Select one of the templates in the category.

4. Click “Create”

Note that the “Blank” project type is not technically a template. “Blank” creates an
empty project that is not based on a template. I created all of the project templates
(“Novel”, “Novel (with Parts)”, “Research Proposal”, “Comic Script” and so on) by
starting from a blank project. For each one, I then added some extra folders with some
custom icons, set up some document templates, changed a few project settings, and then
saved the resulting project as a template which I then included with Scrivener.

You can create your own project templates in the same way. Here’s how:

1. Create a new project, either from the “Blank” template or from any other
template (you might just want to customise one of the existing templates).

2. Edit the project so that it contains all the elements and settings you want in new
projects created from your template.

3. Select Save As Template… from the File menu.

4. From the “New Project Template” dialog that appears, enter a title and
description for the new template, choose a category and icon, then click on “OK”.

5. Go to File > New Project… You will find the template you just created available
as the basis for new projects. At this point you can delete the project from which
you created the template, if you so wish.

Scrivener projects are saved on disk as folders with the extension “.scriv”.

To see what I mean, try the following:

1. Double-click on a .scriv folder in File Explorer.

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 2. Take a look inside the “Files/Data” folder, for instance.

You will (reassuringly, I hope) discover that all of your work is stored as multiple RTF
and XML files inside various subfolders. This means that even in the worst possible
crash case, if a .scriv file became hopelessly corrupted (although I hope this will never
happen), you would still be able to open and edit all of your work in another program
that supports RTF files.

That said, you should not edit the RTF files inside a .scriv package in any other program
if you intend to keep using them inside Scrivener, as this may cause problems in
Scrivener. Use the Export Files feature if you want to get your individual files out for use
with another program.

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Changing the Default Formatting for New Documents
You can change the default formatting used for new documents like this:
1. In the editor, set up some text with the formatting you want to use for all new
documents, and ensure the cursor is inside it.

2. From the main menu, select File > Options...

3. Select “Editing” in the toolbar.

4. Select the “Formatting” tab.

5. Click the “Use Formatting in Current Editor” button.

From now on, whenever you create a new blank document and start typing, the text will
be with the formatting you set up in (1).
Alternatively, instead of setting up the text in the editor, you can set the formatting in
the text area of the Editing > Formatting panel in the Options.

Changing the Default Formatting for Only a Single Project

Sometimes, you may have a project that needs to use different default formatting from
other projects. You can set this up as follows:
1. From the main menu, select Project > Project Settings…

2. Select “Formatting” in the sidebar.

3. Set up the text in the “Main Text Formatting” text area, or click on the “Use
Current” button to use the formatting in the current editor.

NOTE: This tutorial is set up to use this option.

Applying Default Formatting to Existing Documents

Setting the default formatting in the Options or Project Settings has no effect on existing
documents. (Scrivener could ruin special formatting you have applied if it changed the
formatting for all your documents automatically every time you changed Options.) To
apply the default formatting to existing documents:
1. In the binder, select the documents you want to update.

2. From the main menu, select Documents > Convert > Text to Default
Formatting…

3. Check the options in the dialog that appears and then click “OK”.

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To insert an image into your manuscript:

1. Click into the editor and place the cursor where you would like the image to be
inserted.

2. Go to Insert > Image From File… in the main menu.

3. Select the image file you would like to insert.

Alternatively, drag an image from File Explorer (or drag an image file from the binder)
into the editor.

Note that you do not use File > Import > Files… or drag images into the binder from File
Explorer to import images. Importing images into the binder creates an image
document. Image documents are used for research or reference and are not part of your
manuscript.

Sometimes you will want numbers to appear in the text whose value may change
depending on the arrangement of the text. For instance, you might want to title a
document “Chapter 1”, but if you move it later, it might become “Chapter 2”. For this,
you can use “placeholders”.

To insert an auto number placeholder, go to Insert > Auto Number in the main menu
and pick a number type. A tag will be inserted into the text. For example, if you select “1,
2, 3, 4, 5…”, the following tag will be inserted:

This tag will be replaced with a number when using Compile. There are many other
placeholders you can use in Scrivener—a full list is available from Help > List of All
Placeholders…

You can use placeholders in the text, in document titles, or in your own Compile
formats. Many of the Compile formats provided with Scrivener use placeholders to
insert chapter numbering. To see this, try the following:

1. Go to File > Compile…

2. Select “Manuscript (Times)” from the Formats sidebar.

3. Click on the “+” button in the footer.

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 4. Select “Duplicate & Edit Format…” from the menu that appears. The Compile
window will change to show the options for creating a format.

5. Ensure “Section Layouts” is selected in the sidebar.

6. Select “Chapter Heading” in the section layouts list.

7. Select the “Title Options” tab.

You will see that the “Title Prefix” text box contains the following text:

Chapter Uno
This is what adds “Chapter One”, “Chapter Two” and so on to the start of each chapter
when you use the “Manuscript (Times)” format to compile your manuscript.

By default, Scrivener’s editor uses a “fixed width”, so that when the editor is expanded
beyond a certain width, the text will appear as a column in its centre. If you would
prefer the text to take up the full width of the editor, you can turn this behaviour off in
Options:

1. Go to File > Options... in the main window.

2. Select the “Appearance” tab at the top.

3. Select “Main Editor” from the sidebar.

4. Deselect “Use fixed width editor”.

Scrivener has eight themes including “Dark Mode” that just might be easier on your
eyes.

To switch to the Dark Mode theme:

• From Window > Themes, choose “Dark Mode”.

• You will be prompted to restart Scrivener. Click “OK”, then shut down (File >
Exit) then re-start Scrivener by double-clicking the Scrivener application icon on
your Windows Desktop.

To reset to the default Scrivener theme from Window > Themes, choose “Default”, then
shut down and restart Scrivener.

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Sometimes you will want to navigate through the binder while keeping the document in
the editor pinned in place. “Lock in Place” allows this:

1. Right-click on the header view document icon to bring up the header bar menu.

2. Select “Lock in Place”.

The header bar will turn pink, indicating that the editor is now “locked”. When an editor
is locked, clicks in the binder have no effect on it.

Right-click on the header document icon and deselect “Lock in Place” to remove the
lock.

Transcribing audio and media files in Scrivener is easy with the split view. Try the
following:

1. Split the editor vertically or horizontally.

2. Click into one of the editors.

3. In the binder, select “ThisIsBuzzAldrin” inside the “Research” folder so that it

loads in the editor. “ThisIsBuzzAldrin” is an audio file, so you won’t see much
other than the play controls in the footer bar. (Actually, that audio file is the
beginning of the coolest phone message I ever picked up; sadly, the message was
not for me).

Now you can play the audio file in one editor while typing in the other.

You can control the media file using the keyboard shortcuts defined in the Navigate >
Media menu. Ctrl+Return will play or pause the file, for instance, without your having to
click away from your typing.

Also note the button in the left of the media file’s footer bar:

That is the “pause and rewind” button. If you click it, it will appear
grey/depressed(depending on theme), indicating that it is on. When “pause and rewind”
is turned on, whenever you pause the media file it will automatically be rewound a
couple of seconds (you can determine exactly how many seconds it gets rewound in the

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Behaviors tab of the Options, under “Playback”). This is very useful for transcription.

Having problems coming up with character names? Scrivener comes with a name
generator, available from Edit > Writing Tools > Name Generator…

You can print individual documents, the contents of the outliner, and index cards from
the corkboard, by using File > Print Current Document… in the main menu.

You can change various options pertaining to printing as follows:

1. In the main menu, go to File > Print Settings…

Scrivener keeps track of how many words and characters you write every day. To see a
breakdown of how many words you’ve written each day and month for a particular
project, go to Project > Writing History…

By default, when you drag items around in the binder or outliner, you can drop them on
other items as well as between them. Dropping “on” an item places the dropped
document inside the document it was dropped on, as a subdocument.

Drag Text to the Binder

You can create new documents from sections of text in the editor as follows:

1. Select some text in the editor.

2. Click on the text and hold to begin a drag.

3. Drag the text into the binder.

A new document will be created containing the dragged text.

Drag Text from the Binder

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You can insert the text of a binder document into another binder document like this:

1. In the editor, open the document into which you want to insert the text.

2. In the binder, locate the document whose text you wish to insert.

3. Hold down the Alt key and drag the document from the binder into the editor.

The text of the document will be copied into the editor.

A quick way of adding documents to the project bookmarks list is right-clicking selected
document in the binder and selecting “Add to Project Bookmarks”.

By default, clicking on a document link opens it in the other editor.

You can change this behaviour and determine how you would like links to be opened as
follows:

1. In the main menu, go to File > Options...

2. Click on “Behaviors” in the toolbar.

3. Select “Document Links” in the sidebar.

You will be presented with a number of options that allow you to customise how
document links are opened.

When assigning keywords to documents from the keywords dialog, you can
simultaneously assign the groups to which they belong by holding down the Alt key
while dragging. Try this:

1. Open the inspector and select the Metadata tab, ensuring the Keywords list is
visible.

2. Open the keywords dialog (Project > Project Keywords).

3. Click on the chevron next to “Characters” in the dialog to reveal the names of
some characters.

4. If you were to drag one of these character keywords to the inspector keywords

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 list, only the dragged keyword would be assigned. However, try holding down
the Alt key and then clicking on “John”, dragging it to the inspector. Note how
not only the keyword “John” gets added, but also the name of its group,
“Characters”.

The index card in the inspector can be used to show an image instead of a synopsis. If an
image is used instead of a synopsis, then the image will also be used on the corkboard.
This could be useful if you have a document about a character and want a photo to
represent the character on the corkboard, for instance.

To use an image in the index card for a document:

1. Open the Inspector.

2. Select the Notes tab so that the synopsis and notes are displayed.

3. In the synopsis header bar, click on the icon of the picture. The synopsis area will
be replaced with a grey area saying “Drop an image here.”

4. Locate the image you wish to use in File Explorer and drag it into the grey area.

To switch back to the synopsis, click on the index card icon in the synopsis header bar
(this will not remove the image, but just toggle back to displaying the synopsis).

Generally, Scrivener is set up to assume that each project contains a single book (or
writing project): when you compile, you compile the entire Draft folder into a single
manuscript. However, you don’t have to work this way. Perhaps you are working on a
series of books that rely on the same research, for instance—in that case, you might
want to set up a project to contain multiple books. Here’s how:

1. Inside the Draft folder, setup a subfolder for each book.

2. Treat each subfolder inside the Draft folder as though it were the Draft folder for
one of your books, creating your chapters for each book inside the book
subfolder.

3. Adjust the section type settings under “Default Types by Structure” in Project
Settings as necessary, so that they correctly reflect the updated structure.

Then, when you want to compile one of the books:

1. Go to File > Compile…

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 2. Above the list of documents on the right side of the Compile dialog, click on the
pop-up menu next to where it says “Compile” (this pop-up normally shows the
name of your Draft folder).

3. Select the folder containing the book you wish to compile.

4. Tick “Treat compile group as complete manuscript”. This tells Scrivener that the
folder you are compiling should be treated as though it is a complete book and
not part of a larger draft.

5. Ensure “Include text of containing group” is not ticked.

Go to File > Options… and enter your details in the “Author Information” section of the
“General” tab.

If you find yourself opening and closing the binder and inspector frequently, or
spending a lot of time setting up the corkboard or outliner view to appear in the right
place for a particular task, check out the Layouts feature:

From the main menu, select Window > Layouts > Manage Layouts…

This allows you to save the state of the interface and quickly return to it at a later time,
either via the layouts dialog or the Window > Layouts menu.

Layouts can also be accessed through the View button which appears on the very left of
the toolbar by default.

If you have to gather a lot of research in other applications and find yourself doing a lot
of copying and pasting into Scrivener, the Scratch Pad feature may come in handy
Window > Scratch Pad (Alt+Shift+Enter).

Scratch Pad
The scratch pad is a dialog that can be called up from any other application using a
keyboard shortcut that you set in the “Keyboard” tab of the Options. You can paste or
type notes into it and send them to one of your open projects either straight away or at
some point later (scratch pad notes are saved in a folder on your hard drive that you can
specify in the “General” Scratch Pad section of Options—they are not part of any
project).

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Note: You can take screen shots, or grab arbitrary sections of your screen with Scratch Pad using
the “Camera” icon in Scratch Pad’s footer bar. Note: The “Camera” icon is only
visible for rich text formatted Scratch Pad documents. You can change the default format to any
plain text format of your choice via File > Options then General - Scratch Pad - Default format.

Although Scrivener is designed to be as stable as possible, and its auto-save should

ensure your work is constantly saved, with important writing projects it’s always a good
idea to make regular backups, saved to either cloud services or external hard drives, so
that your work is always safe no matter what happens.

Automatic Backups
By default, Scrivener will back up a project every time it is closed, and up to a maximum
of five backups of each project will be kept around (with newer backups replacing older
ones). You can change this behaviour and also choose the folder in which automatic
backups are stored, as follows:

1. From the main menu, choose File > Options...

2. Click on the “Backup” toolbar icon in the Options dialog that appears.

You will be presented with a number of options that allow you to determine when and
how backups are made.

Click the “Choose…” button next to “Backup location” to change the automatic backups
folder, and click the “Open backup folder…” button to open the folder currently used for
backups in File Explorer.

Manual Backups
There are two ways of manually creating a backup of a project:

1. Go to File > Back Up > Back Up Now. This will create a new backup of the project
in the automatic backups folder (as determined by the Options).

2. Go to File > Back Up > Back Up To… You will be presented with a chooser dialog,
allowing you to choose where the backup should be saved.

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If at any time you decide you want to wipe all of your edits and restore the tutorial to its
original state, follow these steps:

1. Selecting File > Show Project in File Explorer will highlight the current project
folder in File Explorer.

2. Close the tutorial project in Scrivener.

3. In File Explorer window that opened in (2), move the tutorial project to the
Recycle Bin on your Desktop.

4. Back in Scrivener, go to Help > Interactive Tutorial… You will be prompted to

create a fresh tutorial project.

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