Bring Word documents into River
A document that will not convert comes back as the file, not as a mess.
A .docx is the format most likely to be quietly mangled by something claiming it can read it. If River cannot convert one cleanly, you get the file back rather than a mess. Drop a .docx, or a zip of them, in. Each document becomes an ordinary note. Google Docs has no live connection here — download as Word first, or use Takeout, then drop those files in.
getting your notes out
In Word, save as .docx. In Google Docs, use File → Download → Microsoft Word. Zip several files if you have a folder of them. Drop the files in once you are signed in.
Up to 100MB in one go.
what arrives
The document text as Markdown. Embedded images, within your plan's image allowance. If the filenames look like one document a day, River offers to file them into days.
what the export leaves out
Documents that cannot be converted, and embedded files that are not images. Those come back in the leftovers file. There is no live link to Google Drive.
nothing goes missing quietly
Anything that cannot come across as a file is handed back to you. When the import finishes you get a leftovers file — a zip holding the actual files, with a short note against each one saying why it stayed behind.
Empty notes, and notes River already holds — say the same item is coming through again — are counted rather than packed. A matching title is not the same note. Extra writing for a day you already have arrives as an ordinary note, not as leftovers.
Download the leftovers file before you carry on. It's held for fifteen minutes after the import, and then it's gone. It lives in the page for that window — a refresh lets it go early — and it is never written into your browser's storage.
Pictures stay in the note on every plan, up to its image allowance. Free has 100MB of retained encrypted image storage; pictures beyond that come back in the same leftovers file, with the writing still in River. Paid has no ceiling on the total. Voice recordings come across on every plan. Audio in a format River does not support, or recordings larger than it can keep, come back in the leftovers file.
The same fifteen minutes is your window to undo. One tap, then a confirm, and the whole import goes to deleted. After that, the notes are yours, and can be deleted one at a time or in multiples like anything else.
start here
Write today, even if nothing has come across yet. The archive can come when you're ready.
Your own place to write, with your writing saved to your account.