You can specify the crossword to be opened by choosing a file to open, or by dragging-and-dropping it onto the player. You can also paste plain-text-formatted crosswords into the "Enter crossword text" area.

Once you open a crossword, your state for that puzzle is automatically saved (it will be restored even if you revisit it later, after having worked on other crosswords).

Here are some details on the various supported formats:

• Exolve: You can open Exolve-formatted files with exolve-player. Such files have to contain a crossword in the Exolve format between "exolve-begin" and "exolve-end" lines. They can be HTML files too, as long as the Exolve-formatted data is present in them.
• PUZ: You can open .puz files with exolve-player.
• IPUZ: You can open .ipuz files with exolve-player.
• Text: You can open text files or paste the text into the "Enter crossword text" area and click on the "Auto-grid" button. In either case, the software will try to figure out the grid from the clue numbers and their enumerations. The text should include clues with enumerations, along with the "Across" and "Down" heading lines. Additionally, the clues may be optionally preceded by some text, the first line of which will be taken to be the title and the remaining lines will be treated as the preamble (with some slight attempt at parsing out a setter name). Grid inference works for standard blocked grids ("UK-style": any 2x2 area must have at least one black cell) with 180-deg./90-deg./-90-deg./hor.-flip/ver.-flip symmetry. The width and the height of the crossword should be set in the entry fields under the "Enter crossword text" area (for pasted text as well as text files).