Handing the screenplay over: one episode, one season, or the whole book

In one line: handing the screenplay over — which format for which recipient, what the exported page actually carries, where the title page and page numbers come from, and the separate routes for one episode, one season and a whole book.

Where you start it	The dialog	What comes out
One .script — right-click → Export, or Export Screenplay on its toolbar	Export File	That one episode, as PDF / Word / Fountain / ePub / Markdown
The folder the episodes sit in — right-click → Export	Export Folder	Export Merged: one PDF, or one ePub with a chapter per episode. Export Separately: one file per episode, zipped
The download icon in the file panel's header (also a book's ⋯ menu on the shelf)	Export Work	The whole book, with a What to export range: Manuscript / Everything (manuscript + reference) / Custom

Which format for whom

Recipient	Give them
A Taiwanese production company or broadcaster	Taiwan-format PDF (A4, Heiti 14pt)
A contest, an agent, anyone overseas	Hollywood PDF (US Letter, Courier 12pt)
A producer or script editor who wants to write notes on the file	Word (.docx)
Another screenwriting tool	Fountain (.fountain) — plain text, and it reads back into Slima
Someone reading on a phone or e-reader	ePub (.epub)

One episode: two doors, one dialog

• Open the episode and press Export Screenplay on the left of the toolbar.
• Or right-click the file in the tree → Export.

Either way you get Export File, with the formats top to bottom: PDF (the row is labelled Taiwan or Hollywood, whichever this file is), Word, Fountain, ePub, Markdown. PDF is preselected — Word if PDF is locked for you.

Before exporting, press Preview in the toolbar once. Preview runs the same layout engine as PDF, Word and Fountain, so the indentation, the centring and the scene grid you see there are what comes out.

What the exported page carries

Page one is the title page, and it isn't numbered. Everything on it comes from the four fields at the top of the paper:

Episode number  →  the line above the title
Title           →  dead centre (Hollywood uppercases it and sets it bold)
Subtitle        →  under the title
Writer          →  the name under "Written by"

• A Hollywood title page with no writer prints Anonymous.
• A Taiwan title page prints the file's logline in grey under the title, if it has one. (There's nowhere in the new editor to type a logline — only works copied over from the old Script Studio arrive with one.)

Page numbers start on page two, top right, as 1., 2.… The title page doesn't count as a page.

A Hollywood body: US Letter, Courier. When a speech runs over a page break, (MORE) prints at the foot and the character's name reprints at the top with (CONT'D). Scene headings and character names are never left stranded alone at the bottom of a page.

A Taiwan body: A4, 14pt. If the scene grid is switched on in the format settings, each scene is preceded by a small two-row table.

Fountain opens with a title-page block: Title, Episode, Subtitle, Credit: Written by, Author, Draft date (the day you exported) and the logline if there is one. CJK character names get an automatic @ prefix — Fountain identifies a character line by it being all caps, and capitalising does nothing to kana or Han characters, so without the @ the file won't come back in correctly.

One season: export the folder

Right-click the folder holding the season → Export. You get Export Folder, with Markdown, Word, ePub, PDF and ZIP — plus Fountain, but only when everything in that folder is a screenplay file. A line of explanation appears at the same time telling you what several episodes will turn into.

There's also an Export Mode to choose:

Where the watermark and per-episode numbering live

In exactly one place: open any episode, press Export Screenplay, and look at the lower half of the dialog. When there are other screenplay files in the same folder, a Merge Export (This Folder) section appears with two settings:

• Watermark (optional) — whatever you type prints diagonally in light grey across every body page. The field's own hint reads e.g. CONFIDENTIAL / DRAFT v2.
• Page numbers — Continuous (1 to the end across the whole document) or Per-episode (each episode restarts at 1). Choose the second when the recipient will print episodes separately.

What comes out of a merge export

Cover — the book's title, the folder's name under it, the writer's name, the export date. No watermark, no page number EP01 — a divider page: the episode number large, the episode's own title under it. No watermark, no page number Episode one — the watermark diagonally across every page, the page number at the top right EP02, episode two, and so on to the end of the folder

The cover and the dividers are left clean on purpose — the watermark and the numbering belong to the body pages. With Per-episode numbering each body restarts at 1. The EP numbers follow the order of the files in the tree, not any number in their names.

A whole book: Export Work and "What to export"

The download icon in the Explorer's header (the same row as the manuscript-table icon) opens Export Work, which adds a What to export choice:

• Manuscript — only files marked as manuscript. Screenplay files are manuscript by nature, so this means: episodes only, no character or place reference files.
• Everything (manuscript + reference) — manuscript first, reference material in its own section afterwards.
• Custom — tick what you want. You can also multi-select files in the tree and right-click Export selected (N): that opens this same dialog with those files already ticked.

Backup formats (Slima backup, ZIP) always include every file, whatever the range says.

What export leaves behind

Notes, comments, pending AI changes and version history are not in the exported file. Export carries the screenplay. If you want your reader to see your marginal remarks, those remarks have to be in the screenplay — or you share instead of exporting, which is a different thing and not this page.

When export fails, and when it "succeeds incompletely"

• A PDF downloads the fonts it needs for the languages in your text, with a progress readout. If one of them fails, the file is still produced, but that language's characters may not display — Slima tells you Export finished, but the … could not be downloaded. Retrying usually fixes it.
• On a whole-book export, if some files' text hasn't synced to this device yet, Slima says how many files haven't downloaded and that the result is incomplete. Let the sync finish and export again.

When not to do it this way

• Don't hand over Markdown. It's the prose flattening of your screenplay; the format is gone. It's for pasting into another tool as a draft.
• Don't flip the format for a delivery and forget to flip it back. Format belongs to the file: switch episode 1 to Hollywood for a contest and episode 1 stays Hollywood. The other episodes are untouched.
• Don't expect two seasons in one document. A merge export covers one folder, so with a folder per season you get one season — which is exactly why we suggest a folder per season.

Related

• Docs: Format switch: Taiwan and Hollywood
• Docs: Opening a screenplay file: layout, toolbar, status bar
• Docs: Write a TV series: one folder per season, one file per episode
• Docs: Write a feature film: two hours in one file