Bring the Book Over. The Original Stays Where It Is.

How It Goes

Choose Import on the home screen, then pick a file or a folder. Before anything is written, Shiro shows what the project will hold, with counts of chapters, scenes and words. You choose how a Word or text file splits into scenes, and you can map Scrivener’s statuses onto your own. After the import, read the short report headed “Not carried over, or carried over differently”. On desktop all of this happens on your computer, with no account.

Scrivener 3 (.scriv)

Comes across: the binder; each document’s text with italics, bold, underline, strikethrough, links and footnotes; synopses; document notes, as private notes in the scene; labels, status and keywords; custom metadata, as scene fields; include-in-compile; and snapshots, with their dates and names.

Changes shape: Shiro’s books go part, chapter, scene and no deeper, so documents nested below that fold into their parent scene, in order, each marked with its name. PDFs, images and other media are copied into the project. Saved web pages become sources, each with its copy of the page. Template sheets become Shiro templates. Folders named things like Characters and Places can become World entries, if you tick the box.

Stays behind: custom compile formats (choose a preset in Publish instead), linked files and external sync folders, pictures placed in the text, inline comments and annotations, fonts and colours. So does Scrivener’s trash. You threw those away once already.

Novelcrafter (Folder or .zip)

Acts, chapters and scenes come from the export’s headings. Codex entries become World entries by type (characters, locations, objects, organisations, events, lore) with their aliases, tags and descriptions. Shiro only reads what’s in the export, so whatever Novelcrafter leaves out of it, Shiro never sees.

Word (.docx)

Italic, bold, underline, strikethrough, links, footnotes, tables, comments and tracked changes all come across. An editor’s tracked changes arrive as suggestions still waiting for your answer, so the argument about semicolons carries on where you left it.

You split the file at headings, page breaks or scene-break lines (* * * or #). Headings means Word’s heading styles. If your chapter titles are just bold and centred by hand, Shiro won’t recognise them, so use one of the other two.

Text boxes and pictures placed in the document are left out and counted in the report. Tables with merged cells become simple tables. The old .doc format isn’t read: save it as .docx first. The same route works for Google Docs, Pages, LibreOffice, Ulysses and Atticus, which have no importer of their own.

A Folder of Markdown

Folders become the binder, numbered names set the order, and front matter is kept. A folder that already has Manuscript/ and Notes/ is used as it stands. Images and PDFs are copied in. Hidden folders such as .obsidian and any other kind of file are skipped.

Plain Text (.txt)

You get text and no formatting, obviously. A line holding * * *, *, # or ⁂ splits scenes. A line like “Chapter 4” or “Chapitre 4”, alone between blank lines, starts a chapter. Files from old Windows machines keep their accents, because Shiro works out the encoding.

Afterwards

Imported text counts as “not recorded” in the authorship record, which starts with the first word you write in Shiro. Read the report, open the first and last chapters, and compare the word count with what you expected. If you’re coming from Scrivener, our guide to moving out covers what to check afterwards. Plugins can add importers: Final Draft is one of the example plugins.

The Questions People Ask

Will importing change my Scrivener project?

No. The importer only reads the source, and everything it makes goes into a new Shiro project. You can carry on in Scrivener afterwards as if nothing happened.

Can I import from Google Docs, Ulysses or Atticus?

Not directly. Export a Word .docx from any of them and import that. The formatting Word import keeps is listed above.

Does it read older Scrivener projects?

The importer is written for Scrivener 3. If your project is older, update it in Scrivener 3 first.

Do tracked changes in my Word file survive?

Yes. They arrive as suggestions still waiting for an answer, and Word comments arrive as comments on the same words.