Whether your home office has been invaded and you have little time to write, or you suddenly find yourself with nothing but writing time, I’ve pulled together a motley collection of handy features that every Scrivener user should know about.
NOTE: When the process differs between versions, I’m using S1, S2, and S3, to denote Scrivener versions 1, 2 and 3, respectively.
Quickly Moving Documents Between Projects
Want to add a file to a project that already exists in another project? Simple. Open both projects, adjust the windows to see both Binders, and drag the desired files from one project’s Binder to the other. 
The files are copied into the new project, unlinked, so changes in one will not affect the other.
I love this for sharing general writing resources, research, and even scenes between projects. It also makes it a cinch to add the book files from a novel project to my series bible.
Duplicating Files within a Project
To duplicate an existing document or folder, select the desired files and go to Documents>Duplicate. If you’ve chosen a folder or document that contains subfiles, you can choose to include them or not.
I use this when I want to recreate an existing file structure easily, or to duplicate a blog post that I plan to update with new information.
Grouping Files into a Folder
Did you know you can quickly group a selection of files into a new folder? Just select the desired files and go to Documents>New Folder From Selection (S3) or Document>Group (S1/S2), then give the folder a name. You’ll need to click the arrow next to the folder to expand it and see its contents.
I like to write in scene documents and then group the scenes into chapter folders after I’ve completed the first draft of the manuscript. This is much faster than manually creating each folder and dragging files into it.
Matching the Destination File’s Formatting when Pasting
To match a document’s style when pasting text into Scrivener, use Edit>Paste and Match Style, instead of Edit>Paste.
TIP: This will obliterate italic, bold, and underline formatting in the pasted text. If that’s a concern, try the next option instead.
Applying Default Formatting to a File
Whether you’ve imported a file or pasted a section of text from elsewhere, you can reformat it to match Scrivener’s default, without losing italic, bold, or underline formatting. Here’s how:
Click in the text of the document and go to Documents>Convert>Text to Default Formatting (S3) or Documents>Convert>Formatting To Default Text Style (S1/2).
TIP: If you don’t like the default formatting, you can change it under Scrivener>Preferences>Editing>Formatting (S3), Scrivener>Preferences>Formatting (S1/2 Mac), or Tools>Options>Editor (S1 Windows). Make adjustments to font, spacing, etc in the mini Editor. The new settings are applied to any new documents you create, but must be manually applied (as described above) to existing documents.
Displaying Non-printing (Invisible) Characters
If your format doesn’t come out right when you compile, or our not sure why it looks weird on the screen, [Read more…]
