How do I import a Scrivener project into Storskarvia?

Compress the whole .scriv folder into a .zip (on a Mac, Control-click it in Finder and choose Compress), then open your novel project in Storskarvia and press Import under Draft. Choose the .zip. Storskarvia reads the Draft folder of the binder and opens the result as one document, with each binder item's title as a heading.

Why did Storskarvia refuse my Scrivener novel as too large?

One Storskarvia document holds up to 400,000 characters, roughly 66,000 words, and a Scrivener import arrives as one document. A longer Draft is refused rather than cut short. Make copies of the Scrivener project, delete a different run of chapters from the Draft folder of each copy, and import each copy into the same novel project.

Do my Scrivener synopses, notes and research come across?

Synopses come across; notes and research do not. The text of the Draft folder becomes the document, and each index-card synopsis in the Draft becomes a card on the project's Outline board. Research, Trash, Template Sheets, character and place sheets, inspector notes, snapshots and keywords stay in Scrivener. Italic and bold do not survive either, because the text is read as plain paragraphs.

Chapter 49 · Getting Work In and Out

Importing From Scrivener

Scrivener, Fade In and Celtx keep a book or a script as a bundle of many files rather than one. Storskarvia can open all three bundles directly, which spares you compiling to Word first. This chapter covers what to upload, what arrives at the other end, and what gets left behind, because a migration is only as good as your knowledge of what it dropped.

Zip the project first

A Scrivener project is a folder with a name ending in .scriv. On a Mac it looks like a single file, but it is a package with hundreds of small files inside. A browser cannot upload a folder, so compress it into one .zip:

Mac: in Finder, Control-click the .scriv project and choose Compress. You get My Novel.scriv.zip beside it.
Windows: right-click the .scriv folder and choose Send to, then Compressed (zipped) folder.

Close the project in Scrivener before you compress it, so the archive holds what Scrivener last saved. The name of the zip does not matter: Storskarvia looks inside any .zip for the project's .scrivx binder file and treats it as Scrivener when it finds one. Both Scrivener 3 projects and older Scrivener 2 projects are read.

Uploading it

Open a novel project and find step 2, Draft, on the project page. Press ⬆ Import and choose the zip. There is no second button: the upload starts as soon as you pick the file, and the space beside the button reads Importing My Novel.scriv.zip… while it works. When it finishes, the new document opens in the editor.

If anything goes wrong, the reason is printed in that same space beside the button, and the last section of this chapter lists what each message means.

If you run the import from a project that is not a novel, Storskarvia will not force a book into a script layout. It creates a new novel project named after the book with (Novel) on the end, puts the document there, and says so in a banner at the top of the editor. Press Got it to dismiss it.

What happens to the binder

Storskarvia reads Scrivener's binder and takes only the Draft folder, the one Scrivener marks as the manuscript. On older projects that marker is missing, so it looks for a top-level folder called Draft or Manuscript instead.

Everything inside the Draft arrives as one continuous document, in binder order:

In Scrivener	In Storskarvia
A folder or text item's title	A heading. Top-level items become level 1 headings, the next level down becomes level 2, and anything deeper becomes level 3.
The text of an item	Paragraphs under that heading, one per line of the original.
An item with no title	Its text, with no heading above it.
The project's name	The document's title.

Because the headings are real headings, Storskarvia treats each one as a chapter boundary, so chapter word counts and the per-chapter files written to your storage follow your Scrivener structure from the first save. Writing a Novel explains how headings drive the rest of the novel tools.

What stays in Scrivener

Keep your .scriv project. The import carries your prose, and the following stays behind:

Research, Trash and Template Sheets, plus any top-level folder outside the Draft, such as Characters or Places.
Front Matter kept inside the Draft folder.
Inspector notes, keywords, labels, status and snapshots.
Character formatting. The text is read as plain paragraphs, so italics and bold do not survive. If your book leans on italics for thoughts or titles, plan a pass to put them back.

Index-card synopses do come across. Every item in the Draft that has a synopsis becomes a card on the project's Outline board, titled after the item, in binder order and after any cards already there. A card that matches one already on the board, title and synopsis alike, is not added twice, so importing the same project again does not deal a second set. One import adds at most 500 cards, and a synopsis longer than 4,000 characters is cut to that length; the banner described below says when either happens.

An item whose text Scrivener saved in a damaged state is left out of the import rather than filled with garbage. So is an item the binder lists without an id, and an item that shares its id with another is flagged because its text may be the other one's. When any of this happens, the editor opens with a banner listing each item by title and what went wrong with it. The same banner says how many synopses went onto the Outline board. It stays until you press Got it, so reloading the page does not lose the list. Fix those items in Scrivener and import again, or copy their text across by hand.

A book longer than 66,000 words

One Storskarvia document holds up to 400,000 characters, close to 66,000 words. A Scrivener import arrives as one document, so a longer Draft is refused with a message giving its word count. Storskarvia refuses it outright rather than cutting it short, since half a book stored quietly is worse than a clear refusal.

To bring a long book across, split it on the Scrivener side:

Make two copies of the project, and give them names you can tell apart, such as My Novel Part 1 and My Novel Part 2. Each imported document takes its title from the project name.
In the first copy, delete the second half of the chapters from the Draft folder. In the second copy, delete the first half.
Zip each copy and import both into the same novel project.

The two documents sit side by side in the project, and Compiling a Whole Project puts them back together into one manuscript when you export.

Fade In and Celtx

A .fadein file and a desktop Celtx .celtx project are zip archives too, and upload through the same ⬆ Import button without any preparation. Both arrive as screenplays: import them into a screenplay or series project, or Storskarvia makes a new project with (Screenplay) on the end. The document takes the file's name as its title.

Fade In elements map onto Storskarvia's: scene headings, action, characters, dialogue, parentheticals, transitions, shots and the rest. A style Storskarvia does not recognise becomes a General paragraph, so its text survives even when its role does not. The banner at the top of the editor names each style it did not recognise.
Celtx brings in one script per project. If a Celtx project holds several, only the first one with text in it comes across, so give each script its own project in Celtx before you import. A paragraph whose element Storskarvia does not recognise becomes Action, and the banner at the top of the editor names each element it did not recognise.

Scan the result against Screenplay Elements and fix any line that landed as the wrong element with the element menu or Tab.

Limits

Limit	Value
Size of the uploaded archive	64 MB
Total size of the files inside it	400 MB
Any single file inside it	50 MB
Number of files inside it	20,000
Text in the resulting document	400,000 characters, about 66,000 words
Imports	20 an hour

The archive limit counts everything in the project, including Research PDFs, images, video and snapshots, even though none of them will be imported. The fix for an oversized project is to make a copy, empty its Research folder and Trash, and zip the copy.

When the import is refused

Message beside the button	What to do
That project is larger than 64 MB	Import a copy with Research and Trash emptied, as above.
The import failed (error 413)	The upload was over 80 MB and was stopped before Storskarvia saw it. Same fix.
That project has … files in it, which is more than Storskarvia will open	Delete old snapshots in Scrivener, or import a trimmed copy.
No .scrivx file inside	The zip holds part of the project. Zip the whole `.scriv` folder.
Could not find the Draft folder in that project	Rename the manuscript folder to Draft or Manuscript in Scrivener, then zip again.
Found the project but no draft text in it	The Draft folder is empty. Check you zipped the right project.
The project's binder file is damaged and could not be read	Open the project in Scrivener, let it save, close it, and zip it again.
That file is not the archive its name says it is	The file ends in `.scriv` or `.zip` but is not a zip. Compress the project as described at the top of this chapter.
That file doesn't look like readable text	A zip with no Scrivener, Fade In or Celtx project inside it. Check what you zipped.
That file is very large (~… words)	Split the book as described in A book longer than 66,000 words.
Too many attempts. Please try again in … minutes.	You have run 20 imports in the last hour. Wait the time it names.

Importing single files, such as Word, Final Draft and Fountain, is covered in Importing Final Draft, Fountain, and Text. Getting the book back out again, as a typeset PDF, starts in the next chapter.

Updated 2026-09-25 · Full contents · Something wrong or missing?

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