Format Compatibility
Exactly what happens to each screenplay element when you export, and what comes back if you import the file again.
OpenDraft has more element types than some screenplay formats do. Where a format has no equivalent for an element, the export has to choose the closest thing it does have — so a script can come back from a round trip with some elements changed. This page says precisely which, so nothing about a conversion is a surprise.
Keeping everything: OpenDraft’s own .odraft format is
the only lossless one — it carries every element, plus notes, tags, beats, character
profiles and revision history. When you work in another application’s format, use
File > Save to Library As to keep an .odraft copy alongside it.
Element Mapping
What each OpenDraft element becomes in an exported file. Fountain (back) is the element you get if you import that Fountain file again — the column where the losses show up.
Anything in red is a conversion that loses something:
- Converted — the text survives but becomes a different element (New Act becoming Action, say). Nothing is lost from the page; what is lost is the element it was.
- Flattened — a structure becomes ordinary paragraphs. Dual dialogue stops being two columns; AV rows stop being two columns.
- Not exported — the element is left out of the file entirely. Every one of these is non-printing, so nothing disappears from the printed script — but the outline, the notes and the synopses do not travel.
| OpenDraft element | Final Draft (.fdx) | Fade In / OSF | Word (.docx) | Fountain | Fountain (back) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scene Heading | Scene Heading | Scene Heading | Scene Heading | INT. … (or forced with .) | Scene Heading |
| Action | Action | Action | Action | Action | Action |
| Character | Character | Character | Character | cue (forced with @ if needed) | Character |
| Dialogue | Dialogue | Dialogue | Dialogue | dialogue | Dialogue |
| Parenthetical | Parenthetical | Parenthetical | Parenthetical | (…) | Parenthetical |
| Transition | Transition | Transition | Transition | > … | Transition |
| Lyrics | Lyrics | Lyrics | Lyrics | ~… | Lyrics |
| Shot | Shot | Shot | Shot | forced Action | Action |
| General | General | Normal Text | General | forced Action | Action |
| New Act | New Act | Normal Text | New Act | forced Action | Action |
| End of Act | End of Act | Normal Text | End of Act | forced Action | Action |
| Show/Episode | Show/Episode | Normal Text | Show/Episode | forced Action | Action |
| Cast List | Cast List | Normal Text | Cast List | forced Action | Action |
| Section (outline) | not exported | not exported | not exported | #, ##, ### | Section |
| Note (not printed) | not exported | not exported | not exported | [[ … ]] | Note |
| Scene synopsis | not exported | not exported | not exported | = … | Scene synopsis |
| Dual dialogue | DualDialogue | two speeches, one after the other | flattened | ^ on the second cue | Dual dialogue |
| AV script rows | General pairs, re-read by OpenDraft | flattened | flattened | rows in order, labelled with notes | Action |
| Images | not exported | not exported | embedded | not exported (Fountain is plain text) | — |
| Custom elements (declared by a template) | converted to the built-in element it is based on | converted | converted | converted | the base element |
Title Page Fields
The title page has its own fields, and they travel separately from the script. Final Draft and Word have no named title-page fields at all — a title page is a run of centred paragraphs — so everything is written onto the page in the right place, but an import has to guess which line was which.
| Field | Final Draft (.fdx) | Fade In / OSF | Fountain |
|---|---|---|---|
| Title | on the page | title | Title: |
| Credit (“Written by”) | on the page | not exported | Credit: |
| Written By | on the page | author | Author: |
| Based On | on the page | subtitle | Source: |
| Draft & date | on the page, joined | draft, joined | Draft: and Draft date: |
| Contact | on the page | contact | Contact: |
| Copyright | on the page | copyright | Copyright: |
| WGA registration | on the page | not exported | WGA registration: |
| Notes | on the page | notes | Notes: |
Fountain has no standard key for a WGA registration, but a Fountain title page is an open list of
key: value pairs and a reader that does not recognise one ignores it — so
OpenDraft writes it and reads it back, and no other application is harmed by it.
Why General comes back as Action
Fountain has no General element, and no syntax that could carry one. OpenDraft writes General
as forced Action (Fountain’s ! prefix), because Action is the
one element whose leading spaces and tabs the Fountain spec says to keep — so an indented
General block keeps its shape. But a reader has no way to tell that Action apart from any other,
so importing the file gives you Action:
General → !forced Action → Action
The same is true of Shot, New Act, End of Act,
Show/Episode and Cast List. OpenDraft could invent a private
extension to preserve them, but that would produce files other Fountain applications read wrongly,
which is the opposite of what the format is for. Don’t rely on Fountain to preserve
these five elements when moving a script between applications — use
.fdx, .docx or .odraft, all of which keep every one of them.
Why the ! matters: without it, an all-caps line with a blank line
above it is a character cue in Fountain, and the paragraph beneath it becomes that
character’s dialogue. Forcing the line keeps the downgrade to a single element instead of
rewriting the scene around it.
What Else Does Not Travel
These belong to OpenDraft rather than to any screenplay element, so only .odraft carries them:
- Script notes, tags and entities, beats, and character profiles — no
interchange format has a place for them as annotations.
.fdxis the closest: it carries beats and character descriptions, and now a script note as a Final Draft script note, but not tags. A note you have set to print is different — it is content rather than an annotation, and it travels: see What Each Format Supports. - Version history and revision marks — kept in your OpenDraft library, not in an exported file.
OpenDraft tells you this before you start: opening another application’s format shows what saving back to it can and cannot carry.
Choosing a Format
| If you want to… | Use |
|---|---|
| Keep everything, including notes and history | .odraft |
| Send a script to Final Draft, or get every element back | .fdx |
| Share a plain-text script anyone can read and edit | .fountain |
| Hand a script to someone using Word | .docx |
| Send a script that must look identical everywhere | .pdf |