[ipetraka]

how do I compile just 1 folder instead of everything?

Click the blue expansion arrow in the compile window to show all options. In the Contents section, you can choose the folder you want to compile. By default it does the whole Draft; but you can select any spot within the Draft to do a sub-set.

has anyone else had the issue where Scrivener takes out all the italics and bolds and whatever when you import files?

It's hard to say what is happening here without more information. It could be, for instance, that the font in the original file doesn't have italic and bold variants, and the original word processor was just faking them by slanting glyphs and chunking up pixels.

what the heck are collections and what am I supposed to do with them? (I don't want to have to go through the tutorial again)

There's no good answer to that. Some people might find them useful; others might never once use them. There are a lot of things like that in the program. Here are a few things I've used them for recently:

• To Do list. I needed to proof every item in the Draft; so I dumped them all into a collection and worked my way down the list, removing them from the collection as I worked.
• Collect notes to Individual X. I put notes in as inline annotations with the individuals name in each one, then did a project search for their name and saved the search as a dynamic collection. Now they can open the project, view that tab and see all of my notes to them.

There are some other ideas provided in a bullet list in the user manual section on collections. Eh, I don't have the page number handy at the moment. Check in the table of contents; it's a major section in the chapter "Setting Up the Binder".

is there a way to set a default note card size for the corkboard?

Yes, in fact for all project based options like this (things that stick once you change them): that is what custom templates are for. Set up a blank project just the way you like it and use `File/Save as Template...`; tweak it over the years as your styles change.

I guess the Mac version is super awesome and I'm incredibly jealous, but the Windows is still full of bugs. It's like I've fallen in love with some mildly horrible man--"I think I can change him!"--and I'm just praying that by the time we get married he'll become socially acceptable or something.

We're still working on those! Thanks for hanging in there. The Mac version has been in development since 2004 if you count early concept builds; 2006 is when it finally took shape in the form you see now. That's a long time to get the kinks worked out. The Windows version has had a year in public testing now and is immeasurably better than it was a year ago. If the pace keeps up; it'll get there.

BTW, it doesn't import .odt files yet, but I guess that's something they're trying to fix.

Yes.