Import and export

JustWrite reads and writes the formats writers actually use:

Reads: Word (.docx), EPUB, LibreOffice (.odt), Markdown (.md), plain text (.txt)
Writes: PDF, Word (DOCX), EPUB, and the whole book as a JustWrite .zip

Import

“I have a half-finished novel in Word. I don’t want to retype it — I just want to keep writing it here.”

The Import view (Project section in the sidebar) brings a manuscript file — or a stack of note files — into JustWrite.

Three import modes

When you start an import, you choose what to do with the result:

Mode	What it does
Add existing	Appends the imported chapters to the project you’re currently in. You pick which Part they land in (any existing part, or a brand-new one).
Start a new book	Spins up a fresh project from the imported file. You pick a title and (optional) author.
Add notes	Brings sections of the file in as notes on your current project. Each heading becomes one note; a flat file becomes one. Supports dropping multiple files in one batch.

How to import

Open Import from the sidebar.
Choose your mode.
Drop a file onto the page (or several, for Add notes) or use the file picker. Supported formats: .docx, .epub, .odt, .md, .txt.
JustWrite parses the file(s) and shows a preview with every detected section.
Review the preview: each entry shows its detected title, word count, and a text snippet. You can:
- Rename the title inline.
- Drop entries you don’t want imported.
If the parser had to work around odd formatting, a warnings panel explains what was adjusted — prefixed with the source filename when multiple files were imported.
Confirm. The chapters (or notes) land in your project.

Part picker (Add existing)

“I’m importing one chapter from an old draft. I want it to land in Part 2, not tacked on at the end of everything.”

In Add existing, the Add to part dropdown lists every existing Part in the current project plus a New part… option. The default is whichever Part is last in your manuscript, so a quick import lands at the end of your draft. Pick a specific Part to insert chapters mid-manuscript, or choose New part… to create a Part on the fly (its title defaults to the file name).

Notes options (Add notes)

“I have twenty .txt research files sitting in a folder. Copying each one in by hand is going to take all afternoon.”

The Add notes mode applies two settings to every note in the batch:

Tag — a single keyword (e.g. research, plot, structure). Defaults to note (your interface language’s word for it — nota in Spanish), the tag a new note gets. A datalist suggests tags already in use elsewhere in the project, so your note vocabulary doesn’t splinter over time.
Pin to — where the notes attach. Default is Story-wide (no anchor). Pick a specific chapter or scene to pin every imported note there in one shot — useful when the file is research for a particular scene. You can re-anchor any individual note later from the Notes view.

Multi-file drop: dropping several files at once batches them into a single import. Each file’s detected sections become entries in the same preview list, and the whole batch ingests as one undoable action. Useful for bringing in a folder of .txt notes from another tool.

Optional cleanups

Text normalization (on by default) — converts curly quotes, em-dashes, ellipses, and whitespace to consistent Unicode. Turn it off if you want to preserve the original character encoding exactly.
Entity sweep (offered after import) — an AI scan of the new chapters that proposes characters, locations, and objects to add to your Story Bible. You review every proposal individually; nothing is added without your click. Requires an AI provider.
Images embedded in DOCX, EPUB, and ODT files are extracted and stored alongside the project.
Lists — bulleted and numbered lists (including nested ones) are preserved on import, from DOCX, EPUB, and ODT alike.

When to use which mode

Add existing — you’re moving an in-progress draft from Word or Scrivener into JustWrite and want to keep working on it. Useful for getting one Part of a long manuscript out of a .docx file you’ve outgrown.
Start a new book — you have a finished or partial book in another tool and you want a clean JustWrite project for it.
Add notes — you have research, outlines, character sketches, or scratch text in Word/Markdown/plain text that you want surfaced inside the project. Multi-file makes it practical to bring a folder of notes in at once.

Tips

Chapter detection relies on heading structure (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc., or # and ## in Markdown). A document with no headings will come in as a single chapter; you can split it later using the editor’s Split chapter action.
The preview lets you catch parser mistakes before anything changes in your project. If the chapter split looks wrong, drop chapters from the list or rerun the import after fixing the source file.
Scrivener exports .epub cleanly. Word exports .docx. Google Docs can save as .docx or .epub.

Export

“I’m finally done with this draft. I need a file I can actually send — to an agent, an editor, or just my e-reader.”

The Export view (Project section in the sidebar) produces a finished file in one of four formats.

The format picker

Four cards: PDF, DOCX, EPUB, and JustWrite book. Pick one to see its options.

The first three are finished reading files — one manuscript, typeset for a reader. The fourth is your whole book, everything JustWrite holds, in a file you can put back.

The book’s language

The reading files follow the Book language in Settings → Project, not the language of JustWrite’s screens. Each one declares it — so an e-reader hyphenates and looks words up in the right language, and Word proofs the right one — and writes its own few words in it (Contents, Chapter 3, by author) when JustWrite speaks that language; otherwise those words stay English. A new book starts in the language of JustWrite’s screens; every book from before the field existed is English.

PDF

“My agent wants a clean read. I need something that looks like a real manuscript, not a Google Doc export.”

A print-ready A4 document with:

Serif typesetting
A generated Table of Contents
Each chapter starting on a new page
Optional cover image (set in Settings → Project → Cover image)
Optional Part covers between sections

Engine: pdfmake, loaded the first time you export a PDF. It ships inside JustWrite, so there is nothing to fetch — the progress bar shows “Loading PDF engine…” while it warms up.

When to pick PDF:

Sending a draft to an agent or editor who wants a clean read.
Sharing with beta readers who don’t have specific format preferences.
Printing a physical reading copy.
Any time you want a single self-contained file that opens the same on every device.

DOCX

“My editor wants to leave tracked changes. She only works in Word.”

A Word document that preserves:

Chapter headings (so Word’s “Navigation Pane” works)
Scene breaks
Block quotes
A live table of contents that Word will offer to refresh on first open

Engine: the docx packager, loaded on first use.

When to pick DOCX:

Sending to an editor or collaborator who wants to track changes or leave comments.
Submitting to an agent or publisher who specifies DOCX.
Importing into another writing tool.

EPUB

“I’m self-publishing on Apple Books and Kobo. I need an actual e-book file, not a PDF someone has to squint at on their phone.”

A reflowable EPUB 3 e-book with:

One HTML file per part and chapter
A navigation document
Full compatibility with Apple Books, Kobo, and Calibre
Optional cover image and metadata (title, author, and the Book language)

Engine: JSZip, loaded on first use (shared with import, so it is usually already in memory).

When to pick EPUB:

Publishing to Apple Books or Kobo (both accept EPUB 3 directly).
Publishing to Amazon Kindle — start with EPUB and run it through Amazon’s Kindle Previewer to produce the final format Amazon wants.
Loading onto an e-reader for your own reading.
Sharing with beta readers who use e-readers.

JustWrite book (`.zip`)

“I’ve got a new laptop. I don’t want to export a PDF — I want the actual book, with my story bible and my images, open on the other machine.”

Not a reading file: everything in the book, in one .zip. Every part, chapter and scene, the whole Story Bible, and your images — the same file JustWrite itself uses to move a book.

When to pick it:

Moving to another computer. Export here, copy the .zip across, import it there.
Keeping your own copy of a finished draft, outside the app.
Sending the book to someone who also uses JustWrite — they import it as a new book.
Making an audiobook — this is the file JustVoice reads (see below).

No engine at all — the server builds this one, so it starts immediately.

Where it lands: in the desktop app you choose the folder and JustWrite remembers it for next time. In a browser it goes to your Downloads folder, the same as a PDF.

Filename: your book’s title, kept as you typed it (minus any characters a filename can’t contain) — so The Ninth Facet exports as The Ninth Facet.zip.

Going back in: import a .zip from Settings → Backups → This book → Import a book…, which brings it in as a new book rather than overwriting the one you have open. Importing needs the desktop app.

This is the same export as Settings → Backups → Export this book… — two doors to one thing, so use whichever you’re already standing next to.

Continuous prose toggle (PDF / DOCX / EPUB)

“The * * * scene breaks look fine on screen but they feel amateur in the actual printed book.”

A checkbox that strips scene titles and * * * scene-break ornaments before export, so each chapter reads as uninterrupted prose — the way most print novels are formatted.

Leave it off if you want scenes to remain visibly separated (some writers and indie publishers prefer this).

Audiobook (JustVoice)

JustWrite is writing-only — it doesn’t render audio itself. To produce an audiobook, export the book as a JustWrite book .zip (the fourth format card, above) and open it in JustVoice, the companion voice-production app, which handles casting, narration, and audiobook export.

The .zip isn’t a JustVoice format — it’s just JustWrite’s own book file, and JustVoice happens to read it. (There’s no longer a live “Send to JustVoice” button; the file is the handoff.)

Manuscript stats panel

Before exporting any document format (PDF / DOCX / EPUB), a stats panel shows:

Parts count
Chapters count
Total word count

This is a sanity check — confirm the right scope before clicking Export.

Progress and filename

Progress display — an animated indicator with stage labels: “Loading PDF engine…”, “Composing document…”, “Packaging archive…”.
Automatic filename — the exported file is named after your project title. You don’t need to name it manually. PDF/DOCX/EPUB slugify it (the-ninth-facet.pdf); the JustWrite .zip keeps the title as you wrote it (The Ninth Facet.zip).
Where it goes — in the desktop app every format opens a Save dialog so you choose the folder, and JustWrite remembers it for next time. Manuscripts (PDF/DOCX/EPUB) and the .zip remember separate folders, so a submissions folder and a backups folder don’t overwrite each other. In a browser there is no folder chooser, so everything lands in Downloads.

A practical export workflow

For a typical novel ready to go to an agent:

Set your metadata in Settings → Project: title, author, subtitle, genre, book language.
Add a cover image in Settings → Project → Cover image if you want one in the PDF and EPUB.
Open Export.
Pick PDF for the agent submission.
Optional: also export EPUB for your own reading on a device.

For a novel ready to publish:

Set metadata and cover.
Export EPUB for Apple Books, Kobo, and Kindle (via Kindle Previewer).
Export DOCX if your publishing path needs it (some print-on-demand services prefer it).
Optional: export the JustWrite book .zip and open it in JustVoice to produce an audiobook.

A few caveats

The first export of each format loads its engine, once per session. The engines ship with JustWrite; on the desktop app nothing is fetched over the network at all.
The cover image is set in Settings, not at export time. Same image flows into PDF and EPUB.
DOCX TOC is a Word feature, not a static table — Word will prompt to refresh it the first time you open the file. That’s normal.