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?

Writing Outliner, as a Word plug in, enables me to chop up enormous Word documents (>3000 pages), edit those smaller chunks, then bring the whole lot together into one document for publication. Very nice, but it's not being actively developed and not working well (or at all) on Word versions later than 2007.

A very quick look at Scrivener suggests I can edit chunks of documents then bring them together into a single document for publication. My concern is whether the editor within Scrivener has Word-like strength and features. 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.

If anybody could enlighten me or share their experiences .... thanks in advance.

If you just want to split up Word documents into chunks that you edit separately, you can do that with no Word plugins using the "subdocuments" feature of Word. It's also integrated with the outlining features of Word -- on recent Word versions the outlining and subdocuments features are even exposed on the same ribbon.

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

Scrivener and Word are in some sense apples and oranges. You could just as easily ask if Word had Scrivener-like strength and features. Formatting in Scriv is basic and actually isn't even necessarily the same as what gets exported. The software is designed so you can highlight and use different font sizes while you're working, if you choose to, and not have that affect the final export, if that's your intention. Scriv3 finally gets proper named style support, but that's mainly to facilitate consistent formatting on export. Scriv has inline footnotes and notes (as well as non-inline versions of the same), which Word doesn't have, but it doesn't have a concept of endnotes because that's something for export. You can simulate endnotes though if that's how you prefer to think while you write. Scriv3 has improved change visualization and has a few more minor collaboration features, like folder sync, but it's primarily designed for a single author and doesn't have an equivalent multi-user track changes mode. It's industrial strength in the sense that you can find authors of lengthy nonfiction with significant numbers of citations (James Fallows, Michael Baywater, etc.) who use it, but it's not an enterprise-type corporate tool.

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.

Scriv 3 is indeed a great leap forward. The interface is even more logical and clean yet with deep layers. Search and research is improved in the right inspector pane with project global span for use within multi documents, new bookmarking and deeper meta data features. More multi windows, onto texts as copyholders or even floating windows. Sort of Timeline feature by labeling and several other new features.

Click and expand a top comment (Read More) to see timestamps TOC made for this long video review:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeYbSdIwwTY

Impressive.

Thanks Frank and Chris. I wasn't aware of the sub-documents feature of Word, but I don't think that works the same way as Writing Outliner. I don't want to bring any documents together (in outline view or any other way, and certainly not manually, one by one!) until it's time to export, then I want to export to a Word file which requires little or not further editing because whilst I can edit a 3000 page plus document in Word, it is slooooowwwww. Writing Outliner keeps the chunks separate but links them in a "project" and it provides an interface to access and edit each chunk as a separate Word document, in a similar way to Scrivener's interface. A quick look suggests that the sub-document feature of Word doesn't even get close to that sort of functionality or look and feel (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - I suppose it would only be obvious if you'd worked with Writing Outliner).

Thanks also for confirming my suspicions about the Scrivener text editor's limitations - I had already seen how table layout and manipulation differ, which is important as the document contains thousands of tables. I suspected that its not intended to create final layout within the program, but I wanted to be sure. I'm always on the lookout for a Writing Outliner replacement, but it seems to be unique in its field. Which is strange ...

Graham Rhind wrote:

Thanks Frank

Sorry, Franz :-(

Graham Rhind wrote:

I wasn't aware of the sub-documents feature of
Word, but I don't think that works the same way as Writing Outliner. I
don't want to bring any documents together (in outline view or any other
way, and certainly not manually, one by one!) until it's time to export,
then I want to export to a Word file which requires little or not
further editing because whilst I can edit a 3000 page plus document in
Word, it is slooooowwwww. Writing Outliner keeps the chunks separate but
links them in a "project" and it provides an interface to access and
edit each chunk as a separate Word document, in a similar way to
Scrivener's interface.

You may want to look into the subdocuments feature some more -- I don't really understand how what you're describing is different from what Word offers.

In Word, each subdocument is its own separate "chunk". These are separate Word documents -- you can open them separately, save them separately, e-mail them to other people, etc. Or you can open the master document, which consolidates all the chunks into one single document. When you've opened a master document, the outline view allows individual chunks to be collapsed or expanded, which allows you to move from document to document, or edit two documents at the same time, without having to open them directly. But you can open them directly if you want.

I believe in the last two versions of Word this is also integrated with the document structure sidebar, which would give you a two-pane outliner view rather than the Word outliner's traditional one-pane outliner view. But I haven't personally experimented with how the sidebar interacts with subdocuments.

Indeed, and since you suggested it I have been looking into it. There are lots of reports online from users about instability and crashes when the master file gets too large, even in Word 2016, and it did crash on me already today when trying just with smaller files. As far as I can see, every time I want to create/insert/merge or split I have to expand all the sub-documents. So that means having to open (wait wait wait) then edit (in a horrible view - Outline view is not exactly user-friendly) a 3000 plus page 110 plus mB document, which is exactly what I want to avoid. I can't see an easy way to nest sub-documents. There's no drag and drop should I need to re-order the documents as far as I can see. There's no way to add flags or tags to, for example, show which files have certain changes made to them. There's no way to assign for each sub-document how the link to the next document is to be created (page break, return, line break ...); and so on.

It just seems to me to be a way to catalogue files and bring them together in a single file, but without any added features or user-friendliness. This could be down to my ignorance, and I really do appreciate the heads up that Word has this option because it may provide a solution should Writing Outliner stop working, and I shall continue checking it out. But unless one has worked with Writing Outliner it's hard to really appreciate its user friendliness and flexibility, dated though it is ....

Chris Thompson wrote:

You may want to look into the subdocuments feature some more -- I don't
really understand how what you're describing is different from what Word
offers.

In Word, each subdocument is its own separate "chunk". These are
separate Word documents -- you can open them separately, save them
separately, e-mail them to other people, etc. Or you can open the master
document, which consolidates all the chunks into one single document.
When you've opened a master document, the outline view allows individual
chunks to be collapsed or expanded, which allows you to move from
document to document, or edit two documents at the same time, without
having to open them directly. But you can open them directly if you
want.

I believe in the last two versions of Word this is also integrated with
the document structure sidebar, which would give you a two-pane outliner
view rather than the Word outliner's traditional one-pane outliner view.
But I haven't personally experimented with how the sidebar interacts
with subdocuments.

In my experience, Word's master document feature has always had fatal problems. In a few drag-and-drops, across several versions of Word, I've always been able to get subdocuments entangled without a means to recover them, other than cust-and-paste.

I mean "cut and paste." Sorry. Freudian. Cussing is part of master documents, too, but that phase is long over by the time you cut-and-paste rescue what you can. At that point, you're past weeping and into the acceptance stage of your grieving.

I really like Nisus Writer, but what I do with it can be done in Word. Put it in draft display mode and use the Navigator to whisk around to various headings in your file. It's all one document, but it's navigable like master document mode.

If you want to edit in chunks, Scrivener is a great tool, and Literature and Latte's customer support is a thing of rare beauty.

In my experience, Word's master document feature has always had fatal problems. In a few drag-and-drops, across several versions of Word, I've always been able to get subdocuments entangled without a means to recover them, other than cust-and-paste.

I mean "cut and paste." Sorry. Freudian. Cussing is part of master documents, too, but that phase is long over by the time you cut-and-paste rescue what you can. At that point, you're past weeping and into the acceptance stage of your grieving.

I really like Nisus Writer, but what I do with it can be done in Word. Put it in draft display mode and use the Navigator to whisk around to various headings in your file. It's all one document, but it's navigable like master document mode.

If you want to edit in chunks, Scrivener is a great tool, and Literature and Latte's customer support is a thing of rare beauty.

OS: Win
You can write a letter with Word not a book. But it is a standard still largely accepted (to be imported in Pro DTP software).
Let me mention a weak point of Scrivener and a good point of Writing Outliner as Word Add-on.

If you need to write a technical document with equations Scrivener even in its v.3 - for what I read on the Manual - shows its limitations. Mathtype Equations once exported, for instance in RTF, cannot be edited: they are turned into images.
In the Win version (as compared to Mac version) it is still worse than that, because images are very low quality, and they are not always placed correctly in the baseline as they should.
The use of Latex with Scrivener is not easy and suffers some limitations.

WO simulates a Scrivener-like environment. Math equations and Bblio-add ons, which are quite necessary for most technical-academic writing, work normally. Unfortunately it saves in a proprietary format and the development, while promised in the blog homepage, seems continually delayed.

Anthony wrote:

You can write a letter with Word not a book. But it is a standard still
largely accepted (to be imported in Pro DTP software).

Yes, you can write books in Word. I wrote more than 10 books in Word. Four of them were even typeset in Word (not by me, I'd never use Word for that).
But I wrote each chapter in a separate DOC file.

Anthony wrote:

>You can write a letter with Word not a book. But it is a standard still
>largely accepted (to be imported in Pro DTP software).

Of the 200+ authors signed to my publishing company, all but four or five wrote their books in Word. I'd wager that the majority of books are written in Word.

Graham Rhind wrote:

Indeed, and since you suggested it I have been looking into it. There
are lots of reports online from users about instability and crashes when
the master file gets too large, even in Word 2016, and it did crash on
me already today when trying just with smaller files. As far as I can
see, every time I want to create/insert/merge or split I have to expand
all the sub-documents. So that means having to open (wait wait wait)
then edit (in a horrible view - Outline view is not exactly
user-friendly) a 3000 plus page 110 plus mB document, which is exactly
what I want to avoid. I can't see an easy way to nest sub-documents.
There's no drag and drop should I need to re-order the documents as far
as I can see. There's no way to add flags or tags to, for example, show
which files have certain changes made to them. There's no way to assign
for each sub-document how the link to the next document is to be created
(page break, return, line break ...); and so on.

Graham,

May I ask why this document needs to end up as an MS Word file? Is it your choice or an external requirement?

My understanding is that MS Word is a software to make typesetting/desktop publishing (what is commonly referred to as "formatting") available to non-specialists.

But as it also allows you to write the document from scratch or edit existing documents, these lines between writing, editing, and typesetting (before it is consumed as a 'published' document in the form of a .docx file, PDF file, some other digital file, or as a printed doc) become blurred.

Since Word is an entry-level typesetting software, my experiences confirm yours in that it is only suitable for relatively small and simple documents without too much complex formatting and tables and documents.

I have found it unsuitable for dealing with 300+ page documents (with multiple chapters, EndNote references, multiple images and tables, headings, TOC etc.), so I can't image trying to use it for 3000+ page docs.

It would suggest to me that you might need a more professional typesetting (desktop publishing) software, if that's the need. I've never used one, but I presume that's what the likes of Adobe InCopy and InDesign do.

However, if you're only using Word for writing and organising a large document, and want the ability to have meta-comments on the process and the overall document itself, then there are plenty of other options.

You could either look for one software that can do it all within (such as Scrivener), or use other software to use as an overlay by linking from within that software to smaller chunks of Word files, if you must use Word.

ConnectedText (whether from within a CT topic or CT's Outliner) comes to mind, but there must be other outliners that allow you to link to Word files. And then it becomes a matter of organising, annotating etc. those links to smaller Word files.

This inadequacy of Word was one of the reasons that drove me to a Markdown-based writing process in plain text (in WriteMonkey and Gingko). LaTeX is another option, but I didn't need that complexity, plus I also need a Word file as a final output, due to it being the standard required by publishers in my field (unfortunately).

I found writing in plain text with Markdown in WriteMonkey hugely liberating, as it freed me from the obsession fostered by Word to keep formatting the document as I write, only to discover that Word regularly messed it up, and then I felt compelled to be fixing the look of the document, instead of focusing on the content and the writing process (not to mention that much of the formatted text ended up being edited out, so it was a waste of time to format it in the first place).

These days I do all my writing outside of Word, and only export stuff into Word at the very latest moment, for the very final act of formatting (i.e. typesetting), before sending it out.

Those who are writing hefty technical tomes on a Mac would do well to check out Mellel.

https://www.mellel.com

It's not for people who want to write with Markdown, but it appears to have a full feature set and claims to handle long, long texts without any crashes or issues.

Steve Z.

The problem with add-ons is they can break with Word updates. I used Pages for correspondence. Then came an update that broke the mail merge script I was using.

I don’t remember why I got Nisus over Mellel. I remember liking Nisus for simplicity of use and good style sheet support.

Scrivener is great, but I could also be happy writing long form in Nisus.

Dr Andus wrote:

Graham Rhind wrote:
May I ask why this document needs to end up as an MS Word file? Is it
your choice or an external requirement?

You may.

It doesn't actually end up as a Word file. It ends up as a pdf. There are a lot of reasons why this version of this book is managed in Word. The first is history - I write all my books in Word and did so with this one. The first version was around 500 pages and Word managed it fine (and, as that version was published as a physical book, the publisher required it in Word. One of the reasons I continue to use Word is that it does not crash when editing large documents, in my experience. I've tried lots of free or cheap word processors that claim to be Word clones but which prove themselves not to be when I try to edit any large document). However, the book is updated regularly and it has expanded to the current 1000+ chapters and 3000+ pages, which Word can manage but which it manages only slowly. I can overcome this easily using Writing Outliner - it's only the annual step of merging all the files and producing the pdf that can prove troublesome.

Because the resource is now so large moving it to a new platform would be a very, very time-consuming requirement - it took over two years to make a copy in ConnectedText, so it's not a step I would make lightly. I'm sure that various DTP products might handle the files better, but as I make no money from this free resource I'm not willing to spend too much on it (and Adobe software isn't cheap). I do look at other ways of managing the chapters, such as with Whizfolders, Scrivener and so on, but RTF-based software doesn't have the layout options Word has - the document is image- and table-heavy - so those would generally slow me down.

Finally, as mentioned, I have a copy in ConnectedText. The CT version is for publication on a website. The pdf version is for users who prefer a local version. I'm just too nice to my user base, frankly ...

Dr Andus wrote:

I have found it unsuitable for dealing with 300+ page documents (with
multiple chapters, EndNote references, multiple images and tables,
headings, TOC etc.), so I can't image trying to use it for 3000+ page
docs.

Word handles large documents, including ones with all the complexities you list, just fine.

It would suggest to me that you might need a more professional
typesetting (desktop publishing) software, if that's the need. I've
never used one, but I presume that's what the likes of Adobe InCopy and
InDesign do.

After editing in Word, I import documents into Adobe Indesign for layout, typography, etc. - but I don't think anyone would seriously recommend InDesign for *writing* a book.

bobmclain wrote:

Word handles large documents, including ones with all the complexities
you list, just fine.

Well, it depends what you mean by "handling." It didn't meet my definition. Partly it was the EndNote add-on that slowed things down, but even the time it takes to save a large file, crashes etc. just made it unusuable for my use case.

After editing in Word, I import documents into Adobe Indesign for
layout, typography, etc. - but I don't think anyone would seriously
recommend InDesign for *writing* a book.

I wasn't suggesting that either. What I'm saying is that Word is several tools rolled into one for different stages of the outlining, writing, editing, formatting, and typesetting processes, and it does not equally excel at all those functions.

There can be benefits to disaggregating those roles and using more specialist software for each of those stages.

Graham Rhind wrote:

However, the book is updated regularly and it has expanded to
the current 1000+ chapters and 3000+ pages, which Word can manage but
which it manages only slowly.

What version of Word are you using? Office comes in 32 bit and 64 bit versions for the Windows environment. The 32 bit version is what is installed by default and recommended by MS for most users for compatibility reasons, but the 64 bit version (at least in Office 2016) is far better for handling large documents.

Word 365 (2016) 64-bit. Mind you, I wrote the 500 page first version in whatever Word version was around in 1997, and that handled it fine too.


xtabber wrote:

What version of Word are you using? Office comes in 32 bit and 64 bit
versions for the Windows environment. The 32 bit version is what is
installed by default and recommended by MS for most users for
compatibility reasons, but the 64 bit version (at least in Office 2016)
is far better for handling large documents.

Dr Andus wrote:

bobmclain wrote:

>Word handles large documents, including ones with all the complexities
>you list, just fine.

Well, it depends what you mean by "handling." It didn't meet my
definition. Partly it was the EndNote add-on that slowed things down,
but even the time it takes to save a large file, crashes etc. just made
it unusuable for my use case.

This is very strange, and makes me wonder what version of Word you're using and on what computer. I'm not familiar with the EndNote add-on - but many of the books I publish don't require footnotes or endnotes, and those that do rarely exceed a couple hundred of them (which Word accommodates quite nicely, with no crashes or slow loading/saving). The placement of files from Word to Adobe InDesign is pretty flawless, with notes appearing as they should, Word styles translated to InDesign styles, etc.

I think most authors don't want to deal with "niche" third-party software. Just as authors using typewriters produced some pretty impressive books, authors using Word have done the same.

As I've written before in this forum, I lost 40,000 words in MS Word about ten years ago. For some reason, the back-up was lost too. It remains probably the worst thing that has happened to me in my computer-using life.

Around that time there were several pieces on the Internet about the risks of corruption using particular parts of the Word user-interface, and instructions on how to protect one's work from such a fate. My loss was simpler; one moment I was able to edit my work, the next moment it was gone, and gone for good.

To be fair to Word, I had previously used it to put together more than one report containing upwards of 80,000 words plus numerous Excel charts and tables. But, as they say, once bitten, twice shy.

Hence the initial attraction to me of Scrivener and, for me, its most fundamental virtue: damage to one Scrivener document need not destroy the whole, because a Scrivener project is composed of a folder full of separate files. (I didn't know then that a Word "document" is also a package of files, but working in a different, possibly less robust, way.)

Hugh wrote:

My loss was simpler; one moment I was able to edit my work, the next moment it was gone, and gone for good.

My precious work always goes to a Dropbox folder. Even with the free account, you get 30 days of automatic backups, every version easily accessible, flawlessly !

Pierre

Hugh wrote:

As I've written before in this forum, I lost 40,000 words in MS Word
about ten years ago. For some reason, the back-up was lost too. It
remains probably the worst thing that has happened to me in my
computer-using life.

In ye olde dayes (punch cards and magnetic tapes), we had a saying that if your data doesn’t exist in at least three separate locations, it may not exist at all. The cloud hasn’t changed that.