Bring in a book you've already written

If you've already written the book in another program, there's no need to copy it by hand. Exaratio brings it in whole, splits it into chapters by its headings and keeps bold and italics and, in Word and EPUB, the images too. Each chapter also arrives tidy, ready for you to keep writing.

Import step by step

1. Open the work you want to bring the book into, or create a new one.
2. In the File menu, choose Import and your file's format: Word document (.docx), EPUB (.epub), PDF book (.pdf)…
3. Choose the file. Exaratio checks it first and tells you what it contains: how many headings and how many paragraphs, and whether anything won't come in as it is, like a table, a drawing or a formula.
4. Type the Title of the book and choose how to split the Chapters:
   • One chapter for each heading in the file: each heading in the file starts a chapter. This is the usual choice for a book.
   • Everything in a single chapter: useful for a short story or a standalone piece.
5. Click Import. The chapters appear in the manuscript, ready for you to keep writing.

Each chapter arrives tidy

When importing, Exaratio tidies up each chapter without changing a single word:

• it puts the chapter title at the top of the page, if it didn't have one;
• it gives the headings inside their style, and turns lines like “* * *” into scene breaks;
• it joins back together the lines the file broke in the middle of a sentence;
• it corrects the typography for the work's language (which one it is): spaces, dialogue dashes, quotation marks and ellipses;
• it sets the prose justified and indented, except the first paragraph after a heading or a break.

If you later create chapters or paste text, you can tidy them up the same way with Auto-format chapter, in the Format menu.

How the chapters are split

Exaratio uses the file's headings:

• in Word, paragraphs with a heading style (Heading 1, Heading 2…), as well as custom styles based on them and the ones Word marks with an outline level;
• in an EPUB, the book's headings, even if they're spread across several internal files.

The first level of headings starts the chapters, and the next one, the scenes within each chapter.

The text of each heading becomes the chapter's name. A heading that is just a number, like “7”, is named “Chapter 7”. Whatever comes before the first heading is kept separately as Front matter, and sections named Prologue, Dedication or Epilogue are recognized as such.

If the file has no headings but does have lines like “Chapter 1”, “Chapter 2”, Exaratio uses them. If there's none of that, the book comes in as a single chapter and you can split it later.

What is kept

• Links, quotations, lists, strikethrough and underline are kept too.
• From Word, footnotes and endnotes come in too, as Exaratio footnotes, along with numbered lists with their numbering and tracked changes, already accepted.
• Tables come in as text, cell by cell.
• Paragraphs that the file broke at a page change are joined back together.
• In a PDF, repeated headers and page numbers are removed.
• An EPUB's cover becomes your work's cover, if it doesn't have one yet.

Does it detect characters and places?

Exaratio on its own, no: it imports the text, but it doesn't create the sheets for characters, places, objects or organizations. Once you create a sheet, Exaratio recognizes its name and its aliases throughout the book, including in anything you import later.

With your AI assistant, yes. If you ask it to import the book, Exaratio gives it the list of proper names that appear in the text, the expressions that repeat and the dates. With that, your assistant creates, in the same conversation, the characters, places, objects and organizations, with their aliases and relationships, and checks that they're recognized in the text. Import a book with your AI assistant explains how.

What can't be imported

• Books with copy protection (DRM), like many bought in online stores: Exaratio tells you the file is protected.
• Files larger than 8 MB, or larger than 96 MB for PDF.
• A scanned PDF, which is just an image of each page: first you need to run it through a text recognition program (OCR).
• .doc, .odt or .txt formats: save them first as Word (.docx).
• A Word file with macros or with embedded objects from other programs: save it without them.

If a file can't be imported, Exaratio tells you why. Often it's enough to open it in the program you wrote it in, or in Calibre, and save it again as EPUB or Word.