Saving & Exporting

Your manuscript stays on your device. Scriblit saves to a small project file you control, and the Submission tab turns it into clean, submission-ready files when you’re ready to send it out.

Saving, exporting, and importing at a glance

Three actions move your work in and out of Scriblit, and it helps to keep them straight because they serve different purposes.

Saving writes your editable project to a .spb file. This is the format you keep working in. It holds everything: text, spreads, illustration notes, author notes, and your document settings, and it reopens exactly where you left off.
Exporting produces a read-only delivery file such as Word, PDF, or plain text. It is a one-way snapshot formatted for agents and editors. You share it, but you do not keep drafting in it.
Importing brings an existing document into Scriblit. Opening a .spb restores a project as it was. Opening a Word file, a Google Doc, or a text file converts its contents into a new Scriblit manuscript.

The short version: save a .spb to protect and continue your work, export a Word or PDF to submit it, and import when you are starting from something you already wrote elsewhere.

The .spb manuscript file

Scriblit saves your work as a .spb file, the Scriblit picture book project format. It holds your text, spreads, illustration notes, and document settings, and reopens exactly where you left off in the Scriblit editor in your browser (or installed from it).

On the File tab’s Keep group, choose Save (Ctrl+S / ⌘+S) to save to the file you opened, or prompt for a location the first time. When your manuscript is linked to a Google Drive file, Save overwrites it silently, with no picker.
Choose Save As to save a copy to your computer or to Google Drive. When saving to Drive, the dialog shows the current destination folder with a Change button so you can pick a different folder before saving.
In browsers without local file-system access (Firefox, Safari), Save becomes Download Save Copy, and the .spb file downloads instead of saving in place.
On the File tab’s Document group, choose Open to reopen any .spb file.

File → Open restores your manuscript, with spreads, notes, and settings included.

Opening and importing from Google Drive

File → Open lets you choose where to open from: This computer or Google Drive. Choosing Google Drive connects to your Google account and opens a picker where you can select a Scriblit manuscript (.spb), a Word file, a Google Doc, or a plain-text file. A .spb reopens as a project. Every other format is imported, meaning it is converted into a new Scriblit manuscript using the same parser as a local open. The Drive link, including the source file and its parent folder, is saved inside the .spb so it persists across sessions. You can disconnect Google at any time from the Offline & Storage tab of Preferences.

The Submission tab

The Submission tab is where you shape and send a submission packet. Its Content group has four buttons, one per piece: Title Page, Query Letter, Author Info, and Backmatter. Each opens that piece’s own editor — Title Page jumps into the Submission Design dialog’s front-matter section, Query Letter opens the query letter overlay, Author Info opens the Author Info dialog, and Backmatter opens its own editor. Below the Content group sit two text actions, Design and Export, and a strip of submission hints that flags anything worth fixing before you send (for example a missing title or byline), with a link that jumps straight to the fix.

The same two actions are also on the File tab’s Send group, so you never have to switch tabs mid-flow.

Designing a submission

Design opens the Submission Design dialog, with a live Title page / Body preview and three sections: Front matter (title page projection, contact block, author info block, body alignment), Manuscript (how illustration notes render), and Backmatter (placement). See Front Matter, Author Info & Backmatter for the full walkthrough, and Title Page for the title page specifically. These settings describe how an exported submission looks; your on-screen manuscript never changes because of them.

Exporting

Export opens the Export dialog. It delivers a Word (.docx), PDF, or Plain text (.txt) file, either to This computer (or Download, in browsers without local file-system access) or straight to Google Drive. On a phone or tablet with native sharing, a third option hands the file to your device’s share sheet instead. See The Ribbon & Compact for the platform differences.

Every export applies your submission design — the title page, illustration-note style, and typography you set in the Design dialog — rather than your plain on-screen draft.

What’s included. A one-line summary at the top of the dialog states what this send will contain. Click Change what’s included to open the disclosure panel underneath it:

Query letter: None, Before manuscript, or Letter only (a separate file containing just the letter). See Query Letter for what each mode does.
Checkboxes for Author notes, Backmatter, Pitch, First-page contact block, Title page, and Running header. Each starts in an automatic state — included only when you have actually written that content — and you can check or uncheck any of them for this send alone.
Remember these options for this manuscript saves whatever you touched back to the document, so your next export starts from the same choices. Leave it unchecked and the overrides apply to this send only.

Underneath, a read-only Design summary restates the current submission design in one line, with an Edit design › link that closes the Export dialog and opens Submission Design so you can change it.

Sending to Google Drive. Files are written to a chosen export folder rather than your Drive root. Scriblit resolves the folder automatically, in order: the folder already bound to this document, then the folder you last exported to, then the default export folder set in Preferences → Export, then the folder your manuscript saves to, and finally My Drive root if none of those are set. Publishing the same format with the same title overwrites the prior delivery file; giving it a new title creates a new file alongside the old one.

Exporting while Focus Mode is on

If Focus Mode is on when you export, Scriblit asks whether to export the focus copy — what you see on screen, with no spread labels and no author-note comments — or the full manuscript. Focus copies get a (Focus) suffix on the filename or Drive title so they never overwrite a full-manuscript export.

Privacy

Scriblit performs saving, opening, and exporting on your device. Your manuscript text is never uploaded to Scriblit’s servers. When you choose a Google Drive destination, your file goes directly from your browser to your Google account.