Guide/Part One · Get started

Import a document

Bring existing work into GLASS from a Word document, a plain-text file, or a Markdown file.

1. On Home, click Import a document. In Draft Mode, choose File ▸ Import.
2. Pick a .docx, .txt, or .md file. If the document you have open has unsaved changes, GLASS asks you to save or discard them first.
3. The file opens in Draft Mode as a new, untitled document named after the file. Save it (Ctrl+S / ⌘S) to create its .glass file.

The original file is never changed. The imported document takes your new-document defaults (body font, line spacing, and page size), and each Heading 1 becomes a chapter with its own chapter marker.

What comes across

• Word (.docx) keeps paragraphs and headings; bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, superscript, subscript, and small caps; bulleted and numbered lists with their levels; alignment; page and column breaks; footnotes and endnotes; links; tables, with a header row and column widths; and tracked insertions, as ordinary text. Fonts, sizes, text and highlight colors, line spacing, space before and after, and indents come across wherever they set a passage apart from the body text; the body text itself takes your new-document defaults. It leaves behind sections; headers and footers; comments; images; and tracked deletions. A merged table cell arrives as one cell, and a footnote with several paragraphs is joined into one.
• Markdown (.md) keeps headings, emphasis, strikethrough, links, lists, tables, and footnotes written as [^1], plus underline, superscript, and subscript written as <u>, <sup>, and <sub>. Block quotes and code blocks arrive as ordinary paragraphs, and a horizontal rule becomes a * * * scene break.
• Plain text (.txt) has no formatting to keep. If the file has blank lines, paragraphs split at them; if not, each line is a paragraph. Files saved as UTF-8 or UTF-16 (as Notepad sometimes saves them) both read correctly.