We’re very excited to debut the first version of our importer. Currently, our importer only supports Markdown (.md) files. (Don’t worry—importing from .docx is on the roadmap!) Here’s how to get started.
What is markdown?
Markdown is an easy-to-use markup language—if you use programs like Discord and Slack, you’ve probably already used basic Markdown to format your text.
Import your first file
To import a file, open your dashboard, click or tap New document and select Import Markdown (.md). Then select a .md file (or multiple files) from your computer or phone.
After importing your document, you can update your fonts and paragraph spacing and clean up extra line and paragraph breaks by displaying invisible characters.
Supported / unsupported elements
Our importer can handle long, but simple, text files. For instance, since we don’t support images (yet!), any images you upload won’t be imported. You can learn more about our markdown shortcuts here—below you’ll find an overview of the syntax that is / isn’t supported by our current importer.
Format | Supported? | Notes |
Heading 1 | ✅ |
|
Heading 2 | ✅ |
|
Heading 3 | ✅ |
|
Heading 4 | ✅ |
|
Heading 5 | ❌ | Will be imported as plain text. |
Heading 6 | ❌ | Will be imported as plain text. |
Bold | ✅ |
|
Italics | ✅ |
|
Strikethrough | ✅ |
|
Numbered list | ✅ |
|
Bulleted list | ✅ |
|
Block quotes | ✅ |
|
Code block | ✅ |
|
Link | ✅ |
|
Tables | ❌ | We don’t support tables (yet!). You can upvote this request here. |
Image | ❌ | We don’t support images (yet!). You can upvote this request here. |
Export your external documents as markdown
Some programs will let you directly save or export to Markdown. In other instances, you might need to work with an online converter.
Export docs from Google Docs
To save your Google Docs work as Markdown, you’ll need to open your document on a laptop or desktop computer. Open your document, then navigate to File —> Download —> Markdown (.md)
Export docs from Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word doesn’t export or save to .md (but get in touch to correct us if we’re wrong!). As a workaround, you can try Pandoc (though there is a steep learning curve) or import your .docx files into Google Docs and download them as .md files.
If you look online, you might find other plugins and extensions—we just don’t want to recommend any that we haven’t personally vetted.
Export docs from Scrivener
Open your Scrivener project then navigate to File —> Export —> Files. Then find the file type options next to Export text files as: and select Multimarkdown.md.
Help us improve our import experience
Importing in Ellipsus will improve alongside our text editor—the more our editor supports, the more we’ll be able to reliably import. If you have specific feedback on the current import experience, reach out via our in-app chat or email [email protected].