Import from Google Docs

The route in

1. In Google Docs: File → Download → Microsoft Word (.docx).
2. Import that .docx into Alhora.
3. Check the chapter list against your document before doing anything else.

That is the whole process, and it is the same for every formatting tool on the market — none of them read Google's native format, because Google does not publish one to read.

The Google Docs heading quirk

This is the part worth knowing. When Google Docs exports a .docx, its headings frequently carry no named style — Google direct-formats them instead, as text that happens to be larger and bolder. To an importer looking for a Heading 1 style, there is nothing there.

That is why a Google Docs manuscript sometimes arrives in other tools as one continuous chapter with the titles sitting in the prose.

To do that: select each chapter title and apply Format → Paragraph styles → Heading 1. The document looks the same and the export carries a real style.

What comes across

Everything the Word importer handles, because after the download it is a Word file:

• Chapter structure — from heading styles if present, from size and weight if not.
• Italic, bold, small caps, superscript and subscript.
• Footnotes, as real notes.
• Hyperlinks.
• Lists, ordered and unordered, with nesting.
• Tables.
• Images, extracted and placed at their reference points.

What does not

• Suggestions. Accept or reject them in Google Docs first — an outstanding suggestion can export as visible text.
• Comments. Editorial apparatus, not book content.
• Headers and footers, page numbers and manual page breaks.
• Drawings and inserted charts. Export these as images and place them if you need them.
• Fonts and sizes, deliberately — you choose an interior style in Alhora.
• Anything from a linked Sheet. It exports as a static table at best.

If you are working with an editor

Google Docs is the most common place for editing to happen, and the usual workflow is to keep it there and treat the formatting tool as downstream:

1. Editing happens in Google Docs, with suggestions and comments.
2. When a round is finished, accept everything and resolve the comments.
3. Download as .docx and re-import.
4. Accept or skip the changes chapter by chapter, so the formatting work survives.

The alternative — formatting first and then editing in the formatting tool — works too, and means your editor needs access to it. For most authors, keeping the editing where the editor already is and re-importing is the smoother arrangement.

After the import: what to do next

1. Check the chapter list against your manuscript. This is the only step that matters — everything else is recoverable, and a missing chapter found at export is not.
2. Set the trim size before anything else. It determines page count, which determines the gutter margin and the spine.
3. Choose an interior style. This is where the book stops looking like a document.
4. Fill in the metadata — title, author, ISBN, series — because the title page, copyright page and also-by page are generated from it.
5. Run the print-readiness checks, then export EPUB and a print-ready PDF.