Chapter by Chapter

The ultimate companion to Microsoft Word for novel writers

Does CbC work with other word processor (OpenOffice, etc.)?

No. CbC requires Microsoft Word 97 or later to work.

Can I still use another program to edit the files?

Yes. Since CbC 1.5 you may use an alternate editor to edit the files (examples: PSPad for txt files, WordPad for rtf files, OpenOffice Writer or Jarte for doc files). You can choose this alternate editor in the settings of CbC. Default is MS Word.

Know that even if you use an alternate editor, MS Word will still be used silently for many file operations. So, having MS Word installed on your computer is a mandatory requirement to use CbC. Moreover, CbC has a lot of neat features that work only if you use MS Word as your text editor. That means some features will be disabled if you use an alternate editor. These features are:

• no "open" icon next to the file names to indicate wether a document is open in the editor or not
• no asterisk after the file names to indicate if a document has been modified and needs a save operation
• no Editor Window autosnap (CbC can detect MS Word window and snap it next to CbC window)
• no automatic update of the Page/word counts, you will need to trigger this update manually via the "Update Counts" function in the "Tools" menu

So, with such limitations, you may want to know why alternate editors were introduced in CbC. I would answer that some writers still want them, and the above limitations keep CbC usable to some extent.

NB: Darkroom, JDarkRoom, AbiWord, CopyWriter and Notepad do not work very well as alternate editors because they all open the same file in different windows! For other reasons, Q10 and RoughDraft do not work neither.

Is CbC compatible with Word 2007?

Yes, and the docx format can even be used.

CbC offers me the possibility to use the RTF file format instead of DOC, what is the reason?

The RTF support has been added to CbC for writers using Pocket Word. RTF is a good bridge for them between their handled computer and their desktop PC.

What is the SuperNoteCard file link in the Book Info dialog?

This is an advanced feature dedicated to SuperNoteCard users.
SuperNoteCard ("SNC" for short) is a great tool to structure stories.

The "Card" tab (in the bottom view of CbC) is a read-only area which is linked to a SNC file!
When you select a chapter, the content of this Card view is updated with what you wrote first in belonging Chapter in SNC. This Card view in CbC acts as a reminder of the content of your cards so that you don't need to keep SNC open.

Here is how to use this feature.

What if I need something CbC doesn't do?

Please drop me an e-mail.