Importing and exporting

Getting a manuscript from one program to the next with its chapters, page numbers, and formatting intact.

Moving a book between programs

A manuscript rarely finishes in the application it started in. The editor wants Word, the ebook needs EPUB, and the print edition goes through a formatter. Each hand-off is a conversion. Conversions are where chapters vanish into the chapter before them, where page numbers restart on the title page instead of Chapter One, and where a font the editor does not have is swapped for one they do.

The questions here come from writers leaving note apps and word processors, from people turning a draft into an ebook, and from anyone whose proof corrections now live in the wrong file. One idea runs under nearly all of them. Converters read structure, not appearance: a chapter title has to be a real heading, and a page break a real break, before any tool can carry it across.

Each page fixes the problem in the program you already use first. Then it says what Tabularia imports and exports, and where its files stop short of a retail ebook.

The answers

I fixed typos in Vellum. Now my Word file is out of date — One source of truth, a fix log, and Word's Compare to catch drift.
How do I start page numbers after the front matter? — Section breaks and Link to Previous in Word, the options in Google Docs.
My EPUB export lost its chapter breaks — Heading styles, page breaks, and checking the EPUB before upload.
Exporting from Pages to Word messed up my manuscript — What breaks in the export and how to repair it on either side.
My writing app won't export EPUB or PDF — DOCX or Markdown as the bridge, then Calibre, Pandoc, or a formatter.
How do I export an Obsidian novel to Word for my editor? — Order the notes, join them with Pandoc, and watch for wikilinks.
Why does Notion's PDF export look so bad? — Export settings, browser printing, and a better route for manuscripts.
How do I get a standard manuscript DOCX out of Ulysses? — Standard manuscript format basics and the Ulysses export steps.
My chapters were lost or reordered when I imported a Word file — Why bold titles disappear and how Heading 1 fixes it.
How do I open a Scrivener project without Scrivener? — What is inside a .scriv, and three ways to get the book out.

Try it on your own manuscript

Nothing is metered: as many projects as you like at any length, the outline and minimap to move through them, drafts and markup mode for revising, snapshots to return to, sheets and timelines beside the page, and export to DOCX, PDF, EPUB, HTML, Markdown, plain text and Fountain. Bring in what you have already written and read it back as a book.

Start writing Subscribe to the Cloud plan See pricing

The Cloud plan is $18 a month, or $172.80 a year, and adds backup, sync across your devices, sharing a manuscript for review, and publishing your work as a web page — the readers and collaborators you invite do not need a paid account of their own. Tabularia is in Public Beta and shipping steadily; the release notes record what has landed.