Importing from Scrivener
Bring a whole Scrivener 3 project across — manuscript, research, characters, labels and pictures — in one import.
A Scrivener project is more than a manuscript, and the import treats it that way. Your Draft folder becomes the manuscript; your research, character sheets and loose notes come across alongside it, in the same shape you left them.
This is for Scrivener 3 projects. An older one opens and upgrades in Scrivener 3 first.
Get the file
A Scrivener project on a Mac is a package, not a file, so no file picker can select it. Scrivener’s own backup gives you something you can hand over:
- In Scrivener, open the project and choose File ▸ Back Up ▸ Back Up To…
- Tick Backup as ZIP file and save it.
- From your dashboard, choose New Project, then Import a draft, and drop that
.zip. With no projects yet, choose Import manuscript on the welcome screen instead.
Scrivener backups can be up to 200 MB — larger than the limit for a Word file, because a backup carries your research folder too.
What comes across
| In Scrivener | In Endra Studio |
|---|---|
| The Draft folder | Your manuscript, as chapters and scenes |
| Folders and text outside the Draft | Notes, folders and all |
| A Characters folder | Characters, one per sheet |
| A Places, Locations or Settings folder | Locations, one per sheet |
| Synopsis | The document’s synopsis, or a scene’s card |
| Document notes on a scene or chapter | The scene’s card, or the chapter’s Notes block |
| Document notes on research | A note of their own, right after the item |
| Labels, keywords and status | Tags, with their colors |
| Comments, footnotes and annotations | Comments on the manuscript |
| Pictures pasted into your text | Images in the document |
| Formatting, tables and links | The same, in the editor |
Include in Compile is honoured: anything unticked in Scrivener arrives excluded from export here, rather than being dropped.
A research document’s notes arrive as a separate note named after it, such as “Timeline (notes)”, placed right after it. That note opens with a link back to the document, so the document’s Backlinks list it. A research folder’s notes become the first note inside the folder.
Choose what is the manuscript
Most projects need nothing from you. But your binder may not match Scrivener’s defaults — plenty of writers keep the live draft in a folder of their own while the Draft folder holds something older.
So the review page lists every top-level folder and lets you say which one is the manuscript. Everything else becomes notes. You can also switch off any section you don’t want: notes, characters, locations, tags or images.
Each choice re-reads the project, so the structure you’re looking at is always the one you’d get.
What doesn’t come across
Everything left behind is named on the review page, with the folder or document it was in:
- Files that aren’t text — PDFs, audio, video and other research files. Pictures do come across; the rest are listed so you know what to go back for.
- Scrivener’s Trash, and the Template Sheets folder. Restore anything from Trash in Scrivener first.
- Images over 10 MB. A full-resolution screenshot pasted into a document is often larger than this.
- Comments on notes and character sheets. Only manuscript documents have a comment sidebar, so these are reported rather than kept.
- Custom metadata, which has no field to land in. The values are listed on the review page so you can copy anything that matters.
- Snapshots and Scrivener’s compile settings.
Pictures in a character sheet
A character or location sheet becomes that entity’s Description, which is a text field with no room for pictures. So any pictures in the sheet go to the character’s Gallery instead, and the first one becomes their avatar — a location’s becomes its header image.
Nothing is created until you confirm
The review page is a preview. Your project exists only once you choose Create project, and cancelling creates nothing. Your backup is encrypted while it waits and deleted from Endra Studio’s storage once the import finishes, whichever way it ends.
If it can’t be read
Scrivener 1 and 2 projects are refused with a message saying so — open and upgrade the project in Scrivener 3, back it up again, and import that.
A single document that can’t be read is reported by name and comes across empty; the rest of your project still imports.
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