Claude and formatting

Scrivener Scrivener for macOS
, ,
1

The closest I have coming to finding an answer myself is this, Best way to re-import edited Word / Pages file (can I just cut and paste?) - #2 by JimRac . Claude may throw a wrench into things.

Here’s what I did:

  1. I exported my project file to a Word file via Scrivener. The file is large. 2500 pp.
  2. I imported my project file into Claude on the free plan.
  3. Claude was to re-number numbered items containing a P with the number such as P12000.
  4. It succeeded.
  5. I had Claude produce a Word file that maintained styles, as it has done before.
  6. I imported the Word file into a new Scrivener project.
  7. No styles were preserved, although other attempts preserved all styles but one.
  8. Exports to different formats from Scrivener and from Pages produced the same result.

Huh.

The only new part is Claude. Otherwise, I have done the exports with no errors for years.

I’d like to get a Word file into Scrivener with the new numbering & styles intact. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance.:grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

2

Use Word to confirm that the desired styles do in fact exist in the Word document after Claude is done with it.

Make sure that the styles you want to use already exist in Scrivener. (That is, that a style with the same name already exists.)

1 Like
3

One way is to export/ copy Claude MD and import that to Word using Writage add-on (https://www.writage.com), it’s not free but once you buy it, you can install it on all your Word instances (I have both Mac & Windows Word for example). They offer 14 day trial so you can try it out. It also comes with lightweight application to convert Markdown to Word or vice versa that can be handy for quick work.

I’ve found it very useful because I prefer using Markdown to write documents but at work everything has to be Word of course.

4

After fussing around for a few hours, I’ve learned Scrivener only appeared to be the issue, but it was Apple Pages creating the issue. Why? I haven’t figured that out, yet. It’s an Apple issue, though.

Thanks for the help.