Fix Word Import Issues Before Opening Vellum

Vellum is particular about what it wants. It scans your Word document looking for specific signals: the Heading 1 style on chapter titles, blank lines for scene breaks, three centered asterisks for ornamental breaks. When your manuscript uses different conventions, Vellum guesses. It guesses wrong.

The fix is simple. Before you open Vellum, spend twenty minutes preparing your Word file. Clean imports save hours of manual fixes later. This guide covers every formatting issue that causes import problems and shows you exactly how to prevent them.

Why Your Import Went Wrong

Vellum doesn't read your manuscript like a human does. It parses your document looking for structural markers. When those markers are missing, inconsistent, or formatted in ways Vellum doesn't expect, your clean manuscript becomes a mess of untitled elements, merged chapters, and misplaced scene breaks.

The most common problems fall into three categories: chapter detection failures, accidental chapter creation, and formatting that Vellum strips out. Each has specific causes and specific fixes.

The Untitled Chapter Problem

You open Vellum after importing and see a dozen "Untitled" elements scattered through your chapter list. What happened?

Vellum can split a chapter into separate elements when it finds too many empty lines in a row. Writers often use extra line breaks for visual spacing between scenes or to create page gaps in their Word file. Vellum can read a long run of blank lines as a chapter boundary.

The solution: remove all unnecessary blank lines from your manuscript. If you use blank lines for visual spacing between scenes, replace them with a single blank line. Vellum treats one blank line as a scene break, not a chapter break. If a section genuinely needs more visual separation, use an ornamental break there instead.

To find hidden blank lines in Word, click the Show/Hide button (the pilcrow symbol: ¶) in your toolbar. This reveals every paragraph mark in your document. Look for clusters of paragraph marks with nothing between them. Delete the extras until you have no more than one blank line in any sequence.

Chapter Detection: What Vellum Needs

Vellum's documentation tells you to mark chapter starts with a heading style, Heading 1 in particular. It also warns that text that is both centered and bold can be read as a chapter title; for centered text that is not a title, it says to use the "Vellum Centered Text" style. Page breaks matter in a different way. Vellum tells you not to put a page break in the middle of a chapter, so keep page breaks to the gaps between chapters.

Where Page Breaks Belong

If you want each chapter to start on a new page in Word, use a page break. Not a collection of blank lines that push text to the next page: Vellum's guidelines say not to hit Return to push text further down the page. Insert a manual page break with Ctrl+Enter (or Cmd+Return on Mac).

Check this by turning on Show/Hide in Word. Page breaks appear as a line with "Page Break" written in the center. If you see blank paragraph marks pushing your chapter to a new page instead, delete them and insert a proper page break.

The Heading 1 Requirement

Your chapter title needs to be formatted with Word's Heading 1 style. Not just bold text. Not a larger font size. The actual Heading 1 style from Word's Styles gallery.

This applies to every chapter. For numbered chapters, Vellum's guidelines say to use the word "Chapter" followed by a number, such as "Chapter 1," with any title added after a colon. For chapters with a title and no number, Vellum says to use the Heading 1 style as usual. The style must be Heading 1.

Chapter Titles with Subtitles

If your chapters have both numbers and titles (like "Chapter 1: Into the Storm"), put them on the same line separated by a colon and a space. This is the format Vellum's guidelines ask for.

If you want a subtitle on its own line under the chapter title, don't use Heading 2 for it. Vellum's documentation says a chapter subtitle needs a Word style named "Vellum Element Subtitle," which you add to your document yourself. Vellum converts Heading 2 through Heading 5 into subheads at different levels, preserving your hierarchy.

Scene Breaks: The Single Blank Line Rule

Vellum interprets single blank lines as scene breaks. This is usually what you want. When you have a blank line between two paragraphs, Vellum adds a scene break at that location.

The problem comes when your manuscript doesn't use this convention. Some writers separate scenes with three asterisks (***). Some use three pound signs (###). Some use ornamental dingbats.

Good news: Vellum recognizes three asterisks (***) centered on their own line as an ornamental break. These import correctly. If you use *** for scene breaks, center that line in Word and leave it as is. Vellum will convert it to your chosen ornamental break style.

If you use ###, other symbols, or images for scene breaks, replace them with centered *** before importing. You can change the ornamental break style within Vellum after import.

Formatting That Survives Import

Vellum preserves inline formatting from Word such as bold, italics, and centered text. It also imports images, footnotes, and endnotes. Most other formatting gets ignored or cleaned up.

This means there is no need to fine-tune how your Word document looks. Vellum's guidelines say not to worry about font choices, headers, or footers. Vellum applies its own styles based on the Book Style you choose. This is by design. Vellum handles all visual formatting, and it does it well.

Italics for emphasis, internal thoughts, and foreign words will transfer. Bold for signs, text messages, or emphasis will transfer. Centered text will transfer. Font choices will not.

The First-Line Indent Trap

If you indent paragraphs with tabs or spaces in Word, remove them before importing. Vellum applies first-line indentation automatically based on your style choices.

In Word, use Find and Replace to remove manual indentation. Search for a paragraph mark followed by a tab (^p^t) and replace it with a paragraph mark alone (^p). Then search for multiple spaces at line starts.

The correct way to handle indentation in Word is through paragraph formatting (in the Paragraph dialog box, set Special to First line), not manual tabs. Vellum applies its own indentation either way, which is what you want.

The Complete Pre-Import Checklist

Before you drag your Word file into Vellum, work through this checklist. Twenty minutes of prep prevents hours of fixes.

Turn on Show/Hide in Word. Click the pilcrow (¶) button to see hidden formatting marks. You need to see paragraph marks, page breaks, and tabs to clean them up.

Check every chapter start. Each chapter title should be in Heading 1 style. If a page break (shown as a line with "Page Break" text) comes before it, leave no blank lines between the page break and the title.

Remove extra blank lines. Search your document for clusters of paragraph marks. No section should have more than one blank line. Replace visual spacing with single blank lines or remove them entirely.

Verify scene break formatting. Single blank lines become scene breaks. Centered *** becomes an ornamental break. Choose one method and apply it consistently throughout your manuscript.

Remove manual indentation. Use Find and Replace to delete tabs at the start of paragraphs. Delete multiple spaces at line starts. Let Vellum handle indentation.

Check your subheadings. Any text you want as a subhead within chapters should use Heading 2 through Heading 5 styles. Heading 2 becomes a Level One Subhead, Heading 3 becomes Level Two, and so on.

Simplify special formatting. If you have text that needs to look different (epigraphs, letters, text messages), mark it with something searchable like [BLOCK] and [/BLOCK]. You can style these sections properly inside Vellum after import.

Fixing Problems After Import

If you've already imported a messy manuscript, Vellum has tools to fix the damage. You don't need to start over.

Merging Split Chapters

When Vellum creates unwanted chapter breaks, you'll see "Untitled" elements in your navigator. To merge them back into the correct chapter: click the first element that should be merged, hold Shift, click the last element, then choose Chapter > Merge Selected Chapters from the menu.

This combines the selected elements into a single chapter.

Renaming Chapters

Click any chapter in the navigator, then click the large title text at the top of the editor. Type your chapter title. Vellum saves changes automatically.

Converting Elements

If Vellum imported content as the wrong element type (a chapter that should be front matter, or front matter that should be a chapter), select the element in the navigator. Open the Chapter menu, choose "Convert To," and select the correct element type.

Reimporting

If you've made changes to your Word file after the initial import (from editor feedback, for example), you can reimport it. Go to File > Reimport Word File. Vellum replaces the content it imported before, while front or back matter you added in Vellum stays in place.

The Scrivener Path

If you write in Scrivener, you have a cleaner option. Literature & Latte built a "Vellum Export" format specifically for this workflow. In Scrivener, go to File > Compile, choose Microsoft Word (.docx) in the "Compile for" menu, and select the "Vellum Export" format. Scrivener produces a .docx file that Vellum can import.

This export handles chapter structure, titles, and text formatting for you. The chapter structure you set up in Scrivener's binder transfers to Vellum's navigator. Block quotes, verse, captions, and subheadings need the matching styles applied in Scrivener first. A dedication or epigraph page takes some extra setup.

If you use Scrivener, this export is the path of least resistance. The manual Word prep described above is primarily for writers who draft in Word, Google Docs (exported to .docx), or other word processors.

A Template for Future Books

Once you've cleaned up a manuscript successfully, save it as a template. Strip out the content but keep the formatting structure: the heading styles, the page break conventions, your standardized scene break method.

In Word, save this empty template as a .dotx file. Start every new project from this template. Your manuscripts will import cleanly into Vellum without any prep work because the structure is correct from the first word you write.

The template should include: Heading 1 style configured for chapter titles and your preferred scene break marker (single blank line or centered ***) demonstrated once. That's all you need.

What Vellum Does Well

Vellum's import process is strict because its output is reliable. The same structural parsing that causes problems with messy manuscripts also lets Vellum build the table of contents, the ebook files for each store, and the print edition from one file.

Once your manuscript imports cleanly, Vellum handles everything else. Typography that works on Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and print. Scene breaks that scale with font size. Drop caps, ornamental breaks, and front matter styled to professional standards.

The twenty minutes you spend prepping your Word file pays for itself many times over. Clean imports mean you spend your time in Vellum choosing styles and previewing your book, not hunting down formatting errors and merging phantom chapters.

Format your Word file correctly once. Import cleanly. Get back to what matters: making your book look beautiful.