Does Scrivener 3 preserve styles when importing Word documents?
Thanks.
I tried to import a document to see what would happen. Some of the styles came through, but many did not.
For example, this document has six sub-headings. Only the first two came through. The rest, heading 3, 4, 5 and 6 came through as “No Style.”
Is there a way to fix this so documents can make the round-trip?
You will need to define any styles you want importing in the Scrivener project. Scrivener won’t grab styles from the Word document and automatically add them to its own styles, given that styles are project-based and not document-based in Scrivener. But if the styles are already defined in the project, then it will maintain them when importing the Word document.
You can import styles directly from a Word document by opening the styles panel, clicking on the gear button at the bottom, selecting “Import Styles…” and then choosing the Word document. So you could do this before importing the Word document to bring in all styles.
All the best,
Keith
Thanks, this works.
Why, though, is text marked as “Normal” in the project post-Word document import not uniform? That is, the font assigned to text marked as “Normal” varies.
This does not occur with the new, imported styles.
That would depend on the document. Scrivener just imports the file using standard importers and assigns the styles it finds. You would want to get rid of the “Normal” style anyway since it’s generally a bad idea in Scrivener to have a “Body” or “Normal” style - it’s much better to use “No Style” for standard text.
All the best,
Keith
You would want to get rid of the “Normal” style anyway since it’s generally a bad idea in Scrivener to have a “Body” or “Normal” style - it’s much better to use “No Style” for standard text.
Keith - I just came across your comment while reading about importing Word styles. For years, I’ve been using a “Body” style that I created. This allowed me to adjust all the text documents throughout the entire project if I wanted to, for example, change the line-spacing, or font choice. Was surprised to hear you say “it’s generally a bad idea in Scrivener to have a “Body” or “Normal” style”. Can you explain this please?
Why is it a bad idea?
If I dont have a style associated with my Body/Normal text, how would I be able to make a universal change to my Body/Normal text throughout my project?
Finally, I tried importing a Word file with various Headings and also a newly created “BodyFromWord” style. I used the Styles>Import Styles… and pointed it to the Word file. It recognized my Heading styles, but ignored the BodyFromWord style. If I do want to ignore your advice and continue to use a Body style in Scrivener, how can I automatically apply that style when importing from Word?
Thank you…
In Scrivener, a Style acts as a limited Preserve Formatting command. This means that the Compile command won’t touch it unless you explicitly redefine it as part of the Compile settings. For body text, this somewhat defeats the purpose: one of the main functions of Compile is to allow you to redefine formatting as needed to meet the requirements of different end uses.
The more Scrivener-like alternative is to use the default formatting. Once you’ve formatted one paragraph to work the way you want, you can use the Project → Project Settings → Formatting pane to make it the default for this project, or Scrivener → Scrivener Preferences → Editing → Formatting to make it the default Scrivener-wide.
Then, the Documents → Convert → Text to Default Formatting command will reformat existing text to the new default.
Thank you - But as I wrote above the “Documents → Convert → Text to Default Formatting” will not work for me.
I understand the Scrivener is designed to work with Compile, but I NEED to have Headings and Body within a text document. And I NEED to be able to globally update/change that style (without touching any other styles that exist in a given text document.)
Grateful if you can please address my last question regarding importing Word’s Body/Normal style. Than k you.
Make sure that the style you are trying to import already exists – under the same name – in the project’s stylesheet.
No, actually you did not make it clear that the standard way of applying and managing formatting in Scrivener will not work for you.
If it’s a character or paragraph+character (¶a) style, it will override character formatting added in the Editor. If the style is Regular, Compile will remove italics and bold. That can be a surprise if you haven’t been warned. People don’t always understand the options they see when defining a style.
Make sure that the style you are trying to import already exists – under the same name – in the project’s stylesheet.
I’ve tried that a few times and still not working. For example, in Word I make a style called “WORDBODY”, then in Scrivener I create a style called “WORDBODY”. When I import from Word, it recognizes and preserves Heading 1, Heading 2, etc, but it does NOT recognize/preserve the WORDBODY style. Instead, everything that is not a heading is just “No Style” in Scrivener. How to get this to work?
No, actually you did not make it clear that the standard way of applying and managing formatting in Scrivener will not work for you.
Sorry for confusion. I wrote “I understand the Scrivener is designed to work with Compile, but I NEED to have Headings and Body within a text document. And I NEED to be able to globally update/change that style (without touching any other styles that exist in a given text document.)”
In other words, not having a style for body text wont work for me, and "Documents → Convert → Text to Default Formatting” will not work for me as it will strip out ALL styles.
I understand the caveats regarding compile and willing to live with that. All I need now is to be able to map my Word body/text style to a body/text style in Scrivener. Grateful for your help.
Could you send a sample demonstrating the problem to our support address? Please reference this thread. This should work.