The corkboard is one of Scrivener’s most distinctive structural tools, so

let’s look at that now.

Basic Usage
The corkboard shows the immediate subdocuments of the selected
document. To see what I mean, click into the top editor to give it the focus
(it should still be showing the “ThisIsBuzzAldrin” media file; if so, click
somewhere in the grey area so that the header bar of the top editor turns
blue). Once the top editor has the focus, click on the “Draft” folder in the
binder, and ensure that the “Group Mode” control in the toolbar has the
corkboard button selected (or press Ctrl+2).
Note how the corkboard in the top editor now shows the folders “Part
1” through to “Part 5” and the “Other Stuff You Might Want to Know”
document all represented as index cards. If you look in the binder, you will
notice that these five folders and the text document are the immediate
subdocuments (or “children”) of the Draft folder—that is, they are only
indented one level from the Draft folder. The corkboard thus allows you to
concentrate on individual levels of your structure.
Next, in the corkboard itself, double-click on the folder icon in the
second card, which is titled “Part 2: Organisation”. This will drill down to
show the contents of the “Part 2” folder represented as index cards. Each
card shows the title of the document and a synopsis area that can be used
to remind you of the content of the document or to note what you intend
to write in the document later. You can edit the synopsis or title by double-
clicking into a card, and you can drag the cards around (and into the
binder) to reorder your documents.
If the inspector is open while the corkboard (or outliner) is open, it
will show information for the currently selected card. (Remember, the
buttons at the top of the inspector let you show different meta-data.)
You can change the corkboard settings—the number of cards that get
drawn across, their width and so on—by clicking on the button with the
image of four index cards in it in the right of the footer bar beneath the
corkboard:
 (Incidentally, if you don’t like the corkboard background, you can
change it to a colour or texture of your choice in the Corkboard tab of the
Tools > Options. You can also change the way the cards look, to get rid of
the rounded corners to make them look more like real index cards, or
switch to virtual pins instead of corner markers for labels, which we will
turn on shortly.)

Controlling The Other Editor From The Corkboard

Note the button containing the two arrows facing in opposite directions in
the corkboard footer bar:

This is the “Auto-Load Button”. Click on it now, and note that the
button stays depressed, indicating it is active. 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 the “Step 7” card, then on the
“Step 8” card, and then on the “Step 9” card (which should bring you back
here).
See how clicking on the cards opened the documents associated with
them in this editor? That’s a useful trick, as it means you can hide the
binder and use the corkboard or outliner to navigate if you want to, or just
use the corkboard or outliner as secondary navigation tools.
Click on the Auto-Load button again to toggle the feature off, then try
clicking on the cards in the corkboard once more—this time nothing will
happen, because the button has been deselected.

View Options
Go to View > Corkboard Options > Label Pins. The result will depend on
the look you have chosen for the label indicator in the corkboard Options.
If you are using the default corner mark look, then each card that has a
label associated with it will now have a colour chip in its top-right corner;
if you are using the pin look, then each index card will now display a pin
holding it in place that is the colour of the label associated with the
document. Alternatively, you can select View > Use Label Color In >
Index Cards to tint the actual cards with the colour of the label. You can
also select Status Stamps via View > Corkboard Options, which places a
diagonal stamp on the cards—this stamp shows the status associated with
the document represented by the index card.
Right-clicking on an index card brings up a contextual menu that
allows you to change the label (and thus the colour of the pin) and status—
you can use the contextual menu to assign a label or status to multiple
cards, too, by selecting all the cards you wish to affect before right-clicking
on one of them.
There are other viewing options available in the View > Corkboard
Options menu, but we won’t cover them here (though they are all
explained in the user manual, available from the Help menu, of course).
One more thing to note, before we move on, is that graphics files get
displayed on the corkboard as pictures. Click in the corkboard above to
ensure it has the focus, and then click on the “Research” folder to see what
I mean.
Okay, we covered a lot there! Remember that you don’t have to use
the features that don’t appeal to you. Not all writers like corkboards—
some Scrivener users never touch the corkboard at all, preferring the
outliner, which we’ll come to next.

When you’re ready then—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 Step 10 and look at the outliner in more depth. Don’t forget to
click into this split before switching documents!