Scrivener 3 is on the way…

Posted by Franz Grieser
Dec 1, 2017 at 02:52 PM

Graham Rhind wrote:
>Is anybody familiar both with Scrivener (Windows version) and Writing
>Outliner (a Word plugin)? If so, does anybody know how well Scrivener
>might replace Writing Outliner?

I looked at it 10 years ago, or so. It was not very stable in Word 2007, neither was Word then.
In the meantime, Word got a decent outliner features, so the plugin is no longer needed.

>A very quick look at Scrivener suggests I can edit chunks of documents
>then bring them together into a single document for publication.

Right. Either through a menu command or via a shortcut key.

>My concern is whether the editor within Scrivener has Word-like strength
>and features.

No, it hasn’t. Scrivener is a writer’s tool, Word is a tool for office workers. So, Scrivener has no mail-merge feature, for example.
You can, of course, format text, spellcheck, print and export to a number of file formats. However, Scrivener for Word 1.x lacks the paragraph styles Word has - Scrivener 3 will have them. You can insert images and tables (though tables are less flexible in Scrivener).

All in all, Scrivener for Windows 1 is for structuring, for writing and exporting your text eg. to Word.

>As the native format appears to be RTF, I’m unsure about
>that. I can cut and paste from Word to Scrivener, but I do notice that
>the layout does get altered. The original Word documents are, of
>necessity, somewhat complex.

Well, that might be the dealbreaker. Lit&Latte offers a fully functional 30-day trial. I’d import one of your Word files and look how well Scrivener does.