{"id":8494,"date":"2025-12-10T06:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.literatureandlatte.com\/?p=8494"},"modified":"2025-12-10T10:38:41","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T10:38:41","slug":"how-to-compile-your-scrivener-project-for-print-pdf-or-microsoft-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.literatureandlatte.com\/blog\/how-to-compile-your-scrivener-project-for-print-pdf-or-microsoft-word","title":{"rendered":"How to Compile Your Scrivener Project for Print, PDF, or Microsoft Word"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When you compile a Scrivener project, you stitch together all its texts to export a single file. It’s easy to compile for print, PDF, or Microsoft Word format to share your manuscript with others. <\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n<\/section>

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When you compile a Scrivener project, you stitch together all its texts to export a single file. It’s easy to compile for print, PDF, or Microsoft Word format to share your manuscript with others.<\/p>\n

When working in Scrivener, you plan, write, rearrange sections and chapters, and piece together your manuscript. At some point, you will want to export it to send to a critique partner, agent, or editor, or as an ebook if you self-publish. In Scrivener, this process is called compiling<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When Scrivener compiles a project, it stitches together its various elements, recognizing the structure of folders and files to create the sections and chapters of a final manuscript. You can tweak the Compile interface in many ways, but most people never need to go beyond the basics.<\/p>\n

In this article, we look at compiling a Scrivener project for print, PDF, and Microsoft Word .docx formats. In a previous article, we looked at compiling Scrivener projects for ebooks<\/a> that you can use if you self-publish.<\/p>\n

What is compiling?<\/h2>\n

Scrivener projects are made up of a number of folders and files, and the app needs to combine them to export your project to a single file. No matter how complex your Binder – whether you use only files for chapters, or have folders and sub-folders with multiple scene files for each chapter – the manuscript is still linear. It starts at the top of the Binder and proceeds to the last file in the Draft or Manuscript folder.<\/p>\n

Compiling connects all these files, recognizing divisions such as parts and chapters and the files they contain. It also applies styles to them, regardless of how the files are formatted within Scrivener.<\/p>\n

As you’ll see below, the Compile screen has many options, but most users don’t need to go beyond a few basic settings.<\/p>\n

Default template compile settings<\/h2>\n

Scrivener templates<\/a> contain specific compile settings for the type of document they are designed to produce. While you can use the Blank template to create any project, using a specific template – such as Novel, Novel with Parts, or General Non-Fiction – can make compiling simpler.<\/p>\n

In Different Ways of Setting Up Scrivener\u2019s Binder for Your Projects<\/a>, we discuss various ways of setting up the Binder for your project, and the first three examples are the most practical for most uses. From left to right, these show the Novel template, the Novel with Parts template, and the Blank template when first created.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

The first two projects contain compile settings adapted to that project; the Blank project does not have any specific settings.<\/p>\n

The Compile Overview screen<\/h2>\n

Let’s look at the basics of compiling a Scrivener project. I’ll use the Novel, Novel with Parts, and General Non-Fiction templates as examples to show how the process works and how the default settings differ between the two projects.<\/p>\n

To start with, choose File > Compile. This opens the Compile Overview screen.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

There are three columns on this screen, displayed above using the Novel template:<\/p>\n