Splitting a Series into Separate Books
Splitting is the exit door: it takes a series apart, turning each Book into its own separate standalone book in your Library. It's there if you need it, but because it can't be undone, Penpoint makes you very sure before it happens.
How to Split
Step 1: save a backup copy first. Right-click (or Control-click on Mac) the series card in your Library and choose Export Book, then pick a safe place to save the file (your Documents folder, for example). That exported file is your only recovery option once the split completes: if anything goes wrong, or you change your mind later, you can bring the whole series back by importing that file.
See Importing a Book for how importing works.
Note: Use Export Book for this — not Backup Now. Backups made with Backup Now are stored in the series' backup history, and that entire history is deleted when the split completes. An exported file lives wherever you saved it, so it survives.
Step 2: run the split. Open your series from your Library, then click the Series options menu (the three stacked dots ⋮ at the top, next to the series name) and choose Split into separate books…. The confirmation window lists exactly which standalone books you'll end up with. Type the series name to confirm, then click Split into separate books.
Note: Any unsaved edits are saved automatically before the split begins, so nothing you just typed is at risk.
What You Keep
- Every Book survives intact: its chapters, scenes, manuscript, and Book Arcs all carry over into its new standalone book.
- Shared characters, items, and locations get a separate copy in every book they appear in (in Penpoint terms, every Book they had Presence in). From then on, editing Sherlock in one book no longer changes him in the others. Each copy keeps the Importance that Book gave it, so a character who was Background in Book 3 opens as Background in Book 3's standalone book.
- Your Notes and Tags are copied into every standalone book, so nothing you wrote there is lost. A note you kept in a specific Book's folder travels only into that book, where the folder becomes an ordinary one.
Presence (which Books each character appears in) has its own guide: Presence: Which Books a Character Is In, and per-Book Importance is covered in Importance Across Books. Those per-Book notes folders are covered in Using Dedicated Book Folders.
What Goes Away: Permanently
- The series itself: the series file, the book switcher (the menu at the top you use to hop between Books), and the stacked card in your Library.
- Your Series Arcs are not carried over into the standalone books; only Book Arcs survive. Copy anything you want to keep out of your Series Arcs before splitting.
- The series' backup history is permanently deleted, including any backups you made with Backup Now. Each new standalone book starts a fresh backup history from its first open; the file you exported in step 1 covers that gap.
- A true undo: there's no one-click way to reverse a split. You can rebuild a series by hand later (convert one book back into a series, then use Add to Series to bring the others in), but that won't restore your Series Arcs or re-link characters that were shared across Books. Importing the file you exported in step 1 is the only way to get the exact original series back.
Want to bring standalone books back together instead? Your Series in the Library covers adding an existing book into a series.