yWriter FAQ

This document was recovered from the lost yWriter google sites page, and is still a work in progress

Add Links to your documents

You can include links to web pages and local files in your yWriter documents. This only works in scene content or scene description.
For web pages, just paste in the URL. When you click it, your default browser will open to that page.
For local files, you have to paste an http-encoded file link. The easiest way to create one of these is to open your web browser and type "file:///C:/" into the address bar. Now you can navigate to the correct folder using the web browser, and when you see the file you want to include just right-click it and 'Copy link to clipboard' (or similar - this varies browser to browser).
Finally, paste the file link into yWriter, either into the scene content window or the scene description window. When you click the link, the file will open on your PC, assuming the system knows how to handle that particular document type. It's exactly the same as double-clicking a file in Windows Explorer - if the operating system doesn't recognise the file type, it can't open it...

Export/Import for proofing

This Export/Import routine is NOT a method of importing work in progress into a project, it's designed for the following purpose only: You can export a chapter to an RTF file, complete with all the scenes. You can modify the content (e.g. grammar check, proofing, etc). You can then re-import the chapter RTF file and yWriter will replace the scene content in your project with the modified scene content in the RTF file.

Note 1: No matter what changes you make to the content, It is vital that you do NOT mess about with the chapter and scene codes, which will be inserted as [ChID:NN] and [ScID:XX].

If you're having someone else read your work, please advise them not to edit or remove these special tags.

Note 2: You can't export a chapter from one project and import it into a different one.

The scene ID tags won't match, and you'll most likely overwrite scene content at random. To move content between projects you should use the Import and Export entries under the Project menu instead...

Export Chapter

To export a chapter, first make sure it's selected in the list and then click Chapters - Import/Export - Export Chapter. This will present the file save dialog, at which point you should type the name of the RTF file you want to create. When you click Save, the folder containing the RTF will be displayed in Windows Explorer...

The exported chapter file will look something like this:
[ChID:NN]
[ScID:XX]
(Scene content here)
[/ScID]
[ScID:YY]
(Scene content here)
[/ScID]
[ScID:ZZ]
(Scene content here)
[/ChID]

Import Chapter.

Click Chapter - Import/Export - Import Chapter and pick the chapter RTF file you want to import. You can't just select any old RTF, it must be an rtf file created by exporting a chapter from the same project. The format (ScID and ChID tags) is very, very important.
When you import chapter content like this, the chapter ID is ignored. The only thing which matters are the scene IDs in the RTF file, so if you've moved your scenes into different chapters and you import a chapter file, wherever those scene IDs are now, the content will be replaced with the data in the file. E.g. if you import content for scene IDs 124, 943 and 88, the content in those scenes will be updated no matter which chapter they belong to...

Chapters - Another way

In the past I've approached every novel the same way. I know the finished effort will be 32-36 chapters totalling 90000-95000 words, which means each chapter will have 1-3 scenes totalling 2600 words each.
So, I usually create 35 chapters right away and then set to work.
With this latest novel I've realised this organising method may be ideal for a finished novel, but it's not ideal when plotting and writing. Especially when dragging and dropping scenes between chapters.
So, instead of using 'Chapter 1' to 'Chapter 35', I condensed all my chapters into a dozen or fewer so with one- or two-word titles like 'Hotel', 'Arrival', 'Park' and so on, which contain all the scenes with the same location or major event. Most of them have 4000-6000 words across any number of scenes, and the chapters are arranged more-or-less in chronological order.
(Remember it's very easy to move scenes later, when I'm intercutting subplots and dividing the book back into proper chapters.) So what are the benefits with this approach? First, I can work on one chapter containing a bunch of related scenes, almost like mini-plot. Second, it's much easier to keep track of twelve distinct locations or major events than it is to worry about 35 chapters with interwoven subplots. Third, drag-dropping scenes is much easier. Also, knowing which chapter to click to begin work is trivial - instead of clicking chapters 27-31 to find out where I stopped, I know I was working on the Hotel section.
I'm sure I'll uncover more benefits, but for now I have to say I'm very happy. I know several posters on the yWriter group have mentioned naming their chapters instead of using the generic 'Chapter 1' and so on, but I never really appreciated the advantages.

Converting Old Projects

Each major release of yWriter can load projects from all earlier releases, right back to yWriter version 2. (Nobody has yWriter version 1, as it was never released.)

If you have a project from an earlier version and you want to load it into the latest version, click Project - Import Into New Project and then select the correct version.
This table will help you identify the file extension of your old project:
After you click the relevant 'Import yWriter Project' menu item, a file dialog box will be displayed. First you have to select the old yWriter file you wish to open, and then you'll be presented with another dialog box which is asking you to specify a new project file to save the converted data into. (At this stage you should create a new, empty folder to hold the converted project.)
After conversion the yWriter main screen will display the chapters, scenes, characters and other information from your original project. From this point on you're working on the converted project, and the original project won't be altered in any way.

Display File Extensions

By default, most versions of Windows hide the file extension for known file types. Compare these screen shots of the same files in the same folder:




The upper image shows the actual filenames. The lower one shows them filtered, with the known file extensions removed. Now imagine you've been told to rename the active Hal1FACP.yw5 file to something else, and to rename the Hal1FACP.yw5.bak file to .yw5
In the upper window it's easy. In the lower window you're left scratching your head. The 'Hal1FACP.yw5' file in the lower window is really 'Hal1FACP.yw5.bak', and the 'Hal1FACP' file is really 'Hal1FACP.yw5'

Obviously the default option to hide known file extensions is confusing, and therefore we're going to switch it off. The following instructions work on all versions of Windows.
First, open any Explorer window. Next, click the Tools menu item followed by Folder Options. (On new versions of Windows you may need to click Organise - Layout then tick Menu Bar.)



When the window opens, select the View tab. Now compare your display to the screen below, where the option you need to untick has been circled. Once it's de-selected, click Ok to close the window.
Now your system will show the full and correct filenames, and you'll be able to identify and rename files as you please.

Embedding images

yWriter doesn't support image embedding directly into scenes, but you can embed HTML and LaTeX code which will then include images in your exported file.
For example, to embed an image in the current scene, just include this code and the precise point where you want the image: (For HTML export:)
/HTM>
To adjust the size of the image, you need to resample the image itself. For HTML export the image must be saved to the same folder as your HTML export file, else the file won't be able to locate the image.

For LaTeX export:

\includegraphics[width=3.0in]{ESection.png}
\end{center} /TEX>

(Adjust the 'width' parameter until the image is the right size).
Remember you can include any HTML and LaTeX code between these tags, and it will be saved to the relevant export file as-is. Note that you must include a space after the opening tag ("" and not "/TEX>")

Exporting

yWriter includes a wide range of export routines (Text, RTF, Docx, HTML and others.)
Version 5.1.6.2 and later include several new features which make life easier when creating ebooks. For example, if you put a @ in front of your chapter title, the title will be hidden in the exported file. (Useful for copyright pages, blurbs, etc) However, the chapter will still begin on a new page.
Recent versions of yWriter (5.1.9.7 and above) include the option to always export a scene, or only export a scene when the destination is one of html, rtf, rtf individual chapters, or latex. This allows you to create scenes which will only appear in your ebooks, for example, and others which will only appear in Latex export for print editions. This is a very powerful feature, because it means you can have one project which will create rtf, ebook and print editions of the same work, all with different front-matter and content.

Exporting to HTML

There's an 'Export to Ebook' entry under the project menu. This will create an HTML file specially formatted for really easy conversion to ePub, Mobi and other ebook formats using Calibre.
yWriter will now create Epubs directly from the program, without using Calibre at all.
If you type the word as the first line in a scene, the scene will be included as-is in all html exports. This means you can include html code for images, special formatting, hyperlinks and so on. (Usually scenes are converted from RTF and reformatted, which means raw html code won't work.)
You can also include html code within your scenes by using tags. Note the space before the / in the closing tag. Exporting to LaTeX (and PDF)
Version 5.1.7.0 and above include a new 'Export to LaTeX' feature. (What is LaTeX?) You can pick or create your own template (e.g. 5x8" book) and export a fully-formatted document in TEX format, which can then be converted to PDF using TeXnicCenter (part of the proTeXt TeX distribution, which is also freeware.)
As above, if you type the word as the first word in a scene, the rest of the scene will be exported to LaTeX format as-is, without any conversion.
You can also enclose LaTeX commands in your text by enclosing the commands with (There's a space before the / in the closing tag.) This allows you to include special characters, images ... any code you like.

External Editors

The text editor in yWriter is fairly basic, and contains few of the features found in word processing software such as MS Word or OpenOffice Writer.
Many people have asked whether it's possible to edit their yWriter scenes with a different editor, and the answer is yes. There are two ways to do this, but first you have to configure Windows so that when you double-click an RTF file in Windows Explorer, it opens in the RTF editor of your choice. (Instructions for doing so are different for just about every version of Windows, so I haven't included them here.)
The first way to edit with an external program is to right-click the scene in your scene list, then click 'Open with external editor'. This will run the RTF file as though you'd double-clicked it, which is why it's important to set up Windows to open them in the editor of your choice.
Now, there is no way I can program yWriter to detect whether an external editor has finished with the rtf file, especially given the huge range of editors on the market, so from this point on YOU are responsible for telling yWriter when you have FINISHED editing the scene.
To do this, when you've closed the external editor you must right-click the scene in the list and click 'Finished using external editor'. This will force yWriter to reload the content from disk and update the word count.
Please don't click 'Finished using external editor' until you have saved your work and closed the external editor. Too early, and yWriter will simply reload the older version of the rtf while the editor program is still saving a new one.
The second way to edit externally is to 'print' a scene list to your browser using Scenes - Reports - Print Scene List. This list will contain titles and hard links for every RTF file, and clicking them will open the file in your system default RTF editor. However, before you click any of them you must close your yWriter project, since yWriter has no way of knowing you've been editing files and cannot reload them.
So, if using external editors is supported, why would anyone use the internal yWriter editor instead of a polished word processor? I'll tell you why: autobackups. The yWriter editor takes a realtime snapshot of your scene every 'N' seconds (user-defined), and stores them in a zip file by date and time. These are permanent backups, never overwritten or deleted.
To my knowledge no other editor or word processor does this, and the day you lose three hours work because your computer rebooted is probably the day you'll start using yWriter's basic editor instead of that word processor with automatic bullets, curly quotes and ... what was that other vital feature again, the one which no author can be without? Sorry, can't remember. (I don't bother spell- or grammar-checking until the final draft. Why waste time polishing stuff you may cut from your finished novel?)
In summary, I added the external editing feature because people kept asking for it. However, in the long term I suggest you get used to the yWriter editor.

I can't type anything!

First, make sure you've created a project. (New Project Wizard in QSG)
Next, add one or more chapters. (Chapters and Scenes in QSG)
After that, add a scene to the chapter. (Same)
Many people now try to enter text in the preview window at the bottom of the main screen, but there's a reason it won't work: yWriter has a built-in editor with an autobackup feature. You can open many windows at once, allowing cut & paste between them.
To open the proper editor, just double-click any scene title in the scene list, OR double-click the preview window. This will open the editor, and you can then start typing.
(On the main screen you CAN change some lesser items like Goals, Outcome, etc.)

Importing a work in progress

(From Dave Shaw's post and Simon's followup, here, and yWriter's Help menu.)
Importing an existing work into yWriter is fast and easy. Before you begin, you should make sure that you have read the Help File. yWriter installs this for you when you install the program, and the link to it (on Windows) is located under Start Menu -> Programs -> Spacejock Software -> yWriter5.
If for some reason this link is missing, you can access the help file directly by navigating to \Program Files\yWriter5\Help\index.htm, assuming you installed to the default location.

The following is copied verbatim from the Help File
It's very easy to move an existing document into yWriter5:
Step 1) Open the document in your regular word processor, and make sure each chapter has a proper heading: Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and so on. yWriter will use these headings to break the file into chapters.
Step 2) If you have more than one scene per chapter, make sure the scene break is a set of three asterisks, one space apart: '* * *' (Some people use the # symbol or a single asterisk, but yWriter will ignore those because they could also be used in the text for other purposes.)
Step 3) Save your document as an RTF text file.
Step 4) Open yWriter5, click the File dropdown menu and then click Import into new project.
Step 5) Click Import a Work in Progress.
Step 6) Choose the RTF file you saved in step 3.
Step 7) yWriter will load the file and prompt you to specify a new project file to save to.
Once your project has been saved you can add characters, allocate them to scenes as viewpoint and extras, specify the completion level of each scene (draft, outline, 1st edit and so on) and enter titles and descriptions for all the scenes.
And best of luck finishing the book!

Passwords

yWriter 5.2.0.4 will add the option to set a password per project. (You'll find the password setup under the Misc tab on the project settings form, along with basic information about the new feature.)
It's not designed to encrypt your files or protect you from someone determined to read your data. It's just a gentle reminder to kids, family and co-workers that you don't want them reading your work. (If they really want to read your novel, they'd only have to open the RTF5 folder and double-click the RTF files to view the contents.)
This feature is for the registered version of yWriter only, since I can't handle a large volume of email asking how to recover a lost password, remove a password, load a project without knowing the password, and so on. (Short answer: I can't help you. Long answer: You can bypass a password by manually editing the YW5 file, or loading the project into a version of yWriter older than 5.2.0.4. Like I said, the password feature only offers minimal protection.)
If you try to load a password-protected file in an unregistered copy of yWriter (5.2.0.4 or later), you still have to enter the password.

Plot Lines

SINGLE PLOT WITH SUBPLOT

yWriter has a built-in feature for designating whether the scene is significant to the plot or subplot, described in the following section of the Quick Start Guide:
http://sites.google.com/site/ywritersj/q/the-scene-editor#TOC-Plot-or-Subplot
But what do you do if you have multiple plots or subplots? This article will describe some of the ways that yWriter users have used the existing features to help them track multiple plots.
PLANNING

Starting with yWriter version 5.1.4.1, you can print scene cards and that you can then spread out on a table or floor and rearrange visually. Other writers use external software for the brainstorming/planning phase. Two such programs are:
FreeMind
StoryBook

INDICATING PLOT LINES

Here are the ways that some yWriter users have used built-in yWriter features to track their plots.
Characters, Items, or Locations -- Create one for each plot strand.
Tags -- A different tag for each plot strand. Starting with yWriter v5.1.0.2, you can use the reports for that allow you to print all the scenes, characters, items, or locations per tag.
Scene Titles -- Begin each scene title with an abbreviation for the plot. For example, if there is a subplot called "Lois Lane falls in love with Superman," you could begin each title with LL (for Lois Lane) or LOVE.

Rename a Project

When you start your writing project, you might not have even a working title for your novel. After you decide on a working title, you might want to rename your project.
The title is in two places:
The name of the .yw5 file.
The project title displayed at the top of the main screen.
You can change one without changing the other, but to avoid confusion, you probably want to change both.
Important Note: Do NOT rename the rtf files in the RTF5 folders. There is a whole different procedure for that.
How to change the name of the .yw5 file
1. Make sure yWriter is not running.
2. Change the file name as you would normally change the name of any file. For example, under Windows Explorer, right-click the file name and then choose Rename, or press F2, or click the filename once, wait two or three seconds, and click again.
How to change the project title
1. Open the project.
2. Choose Project > Project Settings.
3. On the Project tab, change the text in the Title field.
Thanks to Dave Shaw, whose wording I lifted in a couple of places.

Renumber Scenes

I can renumber Chapter titles. What about scenes?
(For info on renaming and renumbering scene files (not the titles), see this link)
The title is there to quickly identify each scene, so I normally recommend using something like 'Jack and Jill go up the hill' rather than 'Scene 3'. (You can already see it's scene 3 because it's the third scene in that chapter, and if you drag it up by one spot it's now scene 2.)
However, if you want to use the 'Scene 1', 'Scene 2' format instead of descriptive titles, you'll be glad to hear yWriter now has a renumber for scene titles too. Just ensure your scene titles begin with the word 'Scene' (capital S) and a space: "Scene "
Renumber will only affect scenes in the selected chapter, not everything in the project.
* NOTE: Renumber Scenes was added as of version 5.1.4.4

Restoring Backups

yWriter has a comprehensive backup system, but when things go wrong it's handy to have step by step instructions for recovering your data.
Important: If your project files don't have .yw5 extensions, you need to change the Windows folder settings to enable this option: Display File Extensions
First, a couple of DO NOTS:
I. If you open a project and find that it's become corrupted, close yWriter and DO NOT try opening the project again until you go through the steps below!
II. If you have a corrupted project, DO NOT try to open one of the .yw5 backup files in the backup directories. It won't work, and it will complicate your recovery.

Automatic restore, version 5.1.2.7 and later:

Use the option Tools - Backups - Restore Autobackup. Just select your last known good full backup from the list, tell it the folder to restore to (NOT a folder that already contains a yWriter project!), and it will restore a working copy of your project.
NOTE: You can also use this to create a clean copy of your project without all the old backups.
Sometimes, though, you may be able to recover a corrupted project without going back to an old backup. Here are the steps to try. Manual troubleshooting and restore:
1) Close yWriter.
2) Find and make a safe copy of your log.txt file so that you can send it to Simon if he needs it. On a Windows XP system, it will be in (drive letter):\Documents and Settings\(your user name)\Application Data\Spacejock Software\yWriter5. On Vista or Win 7, it will be in (drive letter):\Users\(your user name)\AppData\Roaming\Spacejock Software\yWriter5.
You may want to look at it in a text editor to see if you see an obvious reason for your project file becoming corrupted. (For example, if someone accidentally deleted or renamed your RTF5 folder in your project, it will recreate the folder with nothing in it, and there would probably be a log entry for that.) Note that you can display it from yWriter option Tools - Debug - View Log, if you have yWriter set so it doesn't reopen your corrupted project.
3) Before doing anything else, make a safe copy of your project folder and all of its contents. You don't want to make any changes to the copy, just keep it so you have something you can copy back in and start over with if your first recovery attempt is unsuccessful. 4) Open your project folder and see what's in it. There should be 5 folders and 2 files.
The folders are Autobackups, Export, Images, Logs, and RTF5. The files should be (your project name).yw5 and (your project name).yw5.bak.
If there's a .lock file, it means that yWriter either has the project open or that it crashed while the project was open. In a recovery situation with yWriter shut down, it shouldn't be there. Make absolutely certain that yWriter isn't running (check for the yWriter5.exe task in Task Manager if necessary), and then delete the file. If you have a missing or incorrectly named folder, you can correct the problem. Make sure you understand why the corruption happened before you open the project in yWriter, so that you don't just recreate the problem.
5) If there's nothing obviously wrong in the project structure, compare your .yw5 to your .yw5.bak file. The .bak is a copy of the .yw5 from before the last time you opened it. If you've only opened your project once (see DO NOT #1), the .bak may be good, if your project became corrupt when you opened it. Often when a project becomes corrupted, you'll see a .yw5 file that's 2 KB in size (like a new, empty project) and a .bak file that still contains all your project data from before the corruption. If that's the case, you can recover the project simply by renaming, moving, or deleting the corrupt .yw5 file and replacing it with a copy of the good .bak file. Before you open it, you still need to determine why yWriter corrupted it (for example, the 5.1.2.2 beta that created an incompatibility in any .yw5 files it saved), but at least you have your project back.
6) If the .bak file is corrupt, the next step is to find the most recent good .yw5 file in the Autobackups folder. The names of the folders under the Autobackups folder are dates. Start with the most recent. There should be a file in it named (your project name).yw5_Latest.zip. If there isn't, it means you didn't open the project on that day. If not, look for a file named Full Backup of (your project name).zip. If there isn't one of those, either, you'll need to work back through the dated directories until you come to either a yw5_Latest or a Full Backup. Once you find one, drill down through the directory structure in the zip until you reach the .yw5 file.
Extract it and you should have a good project file again. WARNING: Any changes you made other than scene contents after the time this backup was made will be lost. Contents of new scenes can be recovered by opening their RTF files and copying out the contents, but anything else is lost. This is why that .bak file is so important, because it normally is up to date as of the last time you closed the project.

If it's still corrupted

IF AFTER YOU REPAIR YOUR PROJECT YOU OPEN IT AND FIND IT'S STILL CORRUPTED, either your backup was already corrupted or there's a problem causing it to corrupt when opened. The only known instance of the latter occurs when you open a yWriter project saved with beta 5.1.2.2 in a later version. There are instructions in the discussion archives for correcting that. If your problem is that your last backup was bad, try the one before it. It should always be possible to recover, with the understanding that work done since the last good backup may not be retrievable.

Undo / Redo

Press Ctrl-Z to undo, Ctrl-Y to redo. Note that if you undo several steps and then make a small change, you cannot redo again.

Using Footnotes

yWriter doesn't support footnotes, but there is a way to include them when you're intending to export to LaTeX (and from there, to PDF).
Hal lived aboard a deep space freighter which was permanently attached to the side of Space Station Oberon*. The freighter would never fly again, but the old cabins could still be used for living areas and storage space. The ship hadn't been there long and workers were still busy with the conversion, which meant Hal encountered new signs and detours every morning.
Note the section between , which is where we create the footnote. This is what it looks like in the exported PDF file:



You can use this alternative for footnotes without numbering:
\let\thefootnote\relax\footnotetext
Remember you can include any HTML and LaTeX code between these tags, and it will be saved to the relevant export file as-is. Note that you must include a space after the opening tag ("" and not "/TEX>")

What are Tags for?

yWriter allows you to add your own tags to scenes, locations, characters and items, but why would you need this feature?
First off, tags can be useful if you're writing a novel with a big cast of characters. E.g. you could tag some of your characters 'Montague' and the rest 'Capulet', then print off a list of one or the other. You could also tag the characters with 'pro' or 'anti' and print a different subset.
As for scenes, you could tag them with a code word for the subplot - e.g. Main, subplot1, subplot2. Then you can print off a scene list containing scenes from subplot2, allowing you to concentrate on that part of your novel. You could also tag some scenes with 'rewrite', for example, although I'd use the scene completion ratings for that.

yWriter and cloud storage

If you want to use yWriter with Dropbox (or similar remote storage solutions), this is how:
Do NOT create or run a yWriter5 project in your Dropbox folder. YWriter6 and 7 style projects should be fine. Run yWriter as normal, with your project on a local drive.
After you close yWriter, copy or sync the project to your Dropbox folder.
You can also set the ?backup to secondary path? option in yWriter global settings, and paste in a path on cloud storage