Importing Documents

Already have a draft in Word or Markdown? Import it and Scriptorium turns it into a structured manuscript hierarchy — chapters, scenes, formatting and all.

Supported formats

DOCX (Microsoft Word)
Markdown (.md)

How to import

Start an import from the home screen (Import when creating a project) or from within a project.
Choose the file to import.
Pick a mode:
- New project — creates a fresh project containing the imported content.
- Current project — adds the imported manuscripts to the project you have open.
Review any warnings, and you’re done.

How your document becomes chapters and scenes

Scriptorium uses your document’s headings to build the manuscript hierarchy:

Heading 1 → top level (e.g. Chapter), Heading 2 → next level down (e.g. Scene), and so on.
If the document starts with a single Heading 1 (a book title), it’s used as the project name rather than a chapter.
Anything before the first heading (a dedication, epigraph…) is placed at the start of the first manuscript.
Optionally, scene-break markers (* * * and similar) can split content into separate scenes.
If the document is nested deeper than your project’s narrative depth allows, extra levels are flattened.

What carries over from DOCX

Import preserves a lot of fidelity:

Headings, tables, and links
Bold, italic, underline, strikethrough
Font color, font size, and highlight colors
Paragraph alignment and first-line indent
Bulleted and numbered lists, including nesting
Images (with their display size)
Footnotes, including rich content
Code with syntax highlighting

If something goes wrong

Non-fatal issues (an image that couldn’t be read, an unsupported block) are reported as warnings — the rest of the import continues.
If the import fails outright, Scriptorium rolls everything back so your project is left exactly as it was.