Looking for a way to view or store a group of your documents in a Scrivener project without losing their order in the Binder? If so, read on to learn about collections.
Introducing Collections
In Scrivener, a collection is a subset of your project’s documents that share the criteria of your choosing. For example, you might have a collection composed of all documents that haven’t yet been started, or all those where a specific character is mentioned (helpful for creating a series bible on a series you’ve already started).
Scrivener offers search collections—updated dynamically based on saved search criteria—and standard collections, curated manually by you.
Understanding Search Collections
Whenever you run a project search, Scrivener automatically creates a search collection called “Search Results” that stores the most recent search criteria so you can quickly run the last search again.
But what if you perform a search frequently, but it’s not always the most recent one? No need to recreate the criteria every time, you can save the search as a collection!
A few popular ideas for search collections include documents that share a particular keyword, author, blog location, storyline, setting, timeline, revision status, or point-of-view character.
Let’s create our own search collection.
Running a Project Search
The first step is to run a project search. In this example, I have a story that takes place across three different points in time but isn’t written chronologically. I want to create a saved search to isolate the scenes from 1990 so I can read them through for continuity.
Here’s how:
- Click the Project Search button in the toolbar (looks like a magnifying glass). A text box appears just above the Binder.
- Enter the search criteria in the text box. For our example, 1990.
- Click the small magnifying glass inside the text box to make any adjustments to where or how the search operates. A list of documents that match the criteria appears in the Binder.
At this point, you can select any document to view it and see the matching word(s) highlighted, but we want to make a collection, so we’ll skip that part.
Creating a Collection from a Saved Search
If you got the results you were looking for, you’re ready to save the search with the following steps:
- Click the magnifying glass in the search text box and choose Save Search as Collection.
- Enter a collection title in the New Saved Search Collection text box, and click OK.
The sidebar changes colors and the search results header now displays the collection title with a small magnifying glass to indicate that it’s a search collection. 
- To clear the search box and close the collection (i.e., return to the Binder), click the X in the search box toolbar (or the X at the upper left of the collection list).
Viewing/Hiding the Collections Pane
To view your collections, click the Show/Hide button at the far left of the Binder and choose Show Collections, or go to View>Show Collections.
A pane opens above the Binder to display the list of collections. 
Hide the Collections pane the same way, but choose Hide Collections.
Adding a Standard Collection
If you want a collection of files that’s not based on a search, you can create a standard collection. The contents don’t change unless you add or remove files manually.
To create a standard collection, do the following: [Read more…]
