How do I open a Scrivener project without Scrivener?

What is inside a .scriv

A Scrivener project is a folder. On a Mac, Finder shows it as a single file; on Windows, it opens like any other folder. Inside is a .scrivx file, which is the Binder: every title, in order, written in XML. The writing itself sits under Files, one RTF file per document, in folders named by an ID rather than a title.

So nothing is locked. The text is all there. What you lose without Scrivener is the order and the names.

Three ways to get the book out

• Use the Scrivener trial. It counts thirty days of use, not thirty calendar days. Install it, open the project, and Compile to Word or EPUB. If you only need the file once, this is the most faithful route.
• Open the RTF files by hand. Word, LibreOffice, and Pages all read them. It works for a short story. For a novel of two hundred scenes, you will spend an afternoon matching IDs to titles in the .scrivx.
• Import the project into an app that reads the Binder. The scenes arrive in order under their chapter titles, and you export the format you need from there.

Whichever you choose, work on a copy. A project that was mid-sync when it was copied can be missing documents, and this answer covers a project that will not open at all.

In Tabularia

Tabularia is the third route, and it runs in a browser, so it works on a Chromebook or a Linux machine as well as on Windows or a Mac. Zip the project folder and drop the .zip into the Projects tab. The Draft's folders and documents become Chapters and Scenes in Binder order; from there, Export writes DOCX, EPUB, or PDF.

It reads the Draft and nothing else: research, synopses, and snapshots stay in the project. And it is one-way. Tabularia does not write a .scriv back, so if the book is going back into Scrivener later, take a Word file with it.