And what about importing?

[Jean]

I see people asking all kinds of fancy questions, but what about simply importing a work in progress?

When I search for this I see: " ... format chapters with "Chapter NN" headings and scenes with * * * separators, then use yWriter's "Import Work in Progress" feature"

Does it work? It doesn't for me (current yW7 version, windows 7).

[gurken schnitzel]

Win  7 ? Wow.... 

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[Simon Haynes]

yWriter uses dotnet 4.8.1 so it should be fine on Win 7.

yWriter 6 is available for Vista, and yWriter 5 is for Windows Xp.

I know I used to keep a very old Windows XP laptop around without any internet or other distractions just for writing.

I still maintain old programs that would run on Windows 98 if people wanted to.

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[Jean]

Yes, I have all yW versions and they run fine. But Import is confusing.

[Jean]

It would be nice to be able to import scenes titles, descriptions, and contents

[Simon Haynes]

If you want to send me the file off-list I can take a look and see if I can spot the problem. Don't share it as a reply to this or it'll go to everyone, send it to me direct.

If it's RTF you can try importing it as docx instead, and vice versa.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/8b7ba3b9-65a3-4149-b339-4e74f1c7f527n%40googlegroups.com.

[Jean]

Since I posted I realized Import works for a new project (with ***, not * * *).

But when trying to add scenes to the current project, Import simply dumps the whole file into the content of one scene only. I'm wondering now if it's supposed to work that way.

If so, it looks like Apply Outline could be used to create scene titles and descriptions, and then scene contents would have to be imported, or pasted, one by one.

Importing everything at once would be nice.

I typically create (type) scenes elsewhere and then add them to yW to see the progression on the Storyboard. So, Import would be used often, not a single time, hence the wish to do it easily.

[Simon Haynes]

You can use yWriter to generate an outline, export that, load it into a word processor, fill out the text, then re-import it.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/a180ba38-f74c-4a3c-a867-10d7a7ad2678n%40googlegroups.com.

[Jean]

re-import it? But we're back to the same problem, it seems. I just want to add scenes (title, description, content) to the existing ones.

[Simon Haynes]

If you import to scene, it brings in all the text into that scene.

You need to either copy and paste the contents of each scene into a newly created one, or export the file into chunks representing a scene each and drag-drop all those chunks onto a chapter.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ywriter/fc0df4ad-7dc4-4fcf-9d14-ed41576db064n%40googlegroups.com.

[Peter T.]

On Wednesday, December 10, 2025 at 3:13:37 PM UTC+1 Jean wrote:

re-import it? But we're back to the same problem, it seems. I just want to add scenes (title, description, content) to the existing ones.

You say you write your novel elsewhere but want to have it in yWriter with scene titles and descriptions, mainly for the storyboard. One of the advantages of yWriter is that it supports this kind of workflow out of the box. 

Firstly, you can write scenes using any word processor that is registered as the default for the RTF file format in your Windows system. 

 

On the other hand, you can write your entire novel using your word processor if you export all chapters at once for proofreading. The exported document will then contain chapter and scene markers that allow yWriter to read the document and reassign the chapters and scenes correctly. While writing, you can create new scenes by inserting the correct scene separators (three asterisks with spaces) and letting yWriter split the scene after reading it back. 

That's what yWriter has to offer, and it's no small thing. Frankly, it was the main reason I used yWriter before I programmed my own tools, which expanded on this very concept, supporting OpenOffice ODT files instead of RTF.

If you also want to import metadata such as scene titles and descriptions, I have no idea what form this data is in, i.e., how you originally created it. Perhaps you could explain what other tools you use for this. Otherwise, the easiest thing would probably be to create the metadata in yWriter. 

 

[Jean]

Thanks Peter. You are the one who reminded me of "Split Scene at..." on GitHub novelyst, which is the way to go. Scene title/desc can be set using the first sentence.

I use a typewriter to generate scenes. Every now and then I scan the pages to get an RTF file. I can now paste the whole text in a new yW scene, and split.

I didn't know about Proofing. It's good.