Exporting to CSV or Excel
CSV/TSV export is for working on record data outside the program: a spreadsheet, a chart, a statistical analysis, a list to hand over.
It is in the "⋯" menu above the list, in the right-click menu of a record or folder (Export submenu), and in the command palette (Ctrl+K, "csv" or "excel").
What the file contains
One row per record. The columns are:
- eight fixed columns: shelfmark, document type, folder, tags, attachments, modification date, modified by, created by;
- every field of the models present among the exported records;
- the internal identifier, as the last column (it is an unreadable code: at the front it would push the shelfmark off screen).
Yes/no fields are exported as words ("Yes" and "No", in the interface language), not as true/false, which are not readable in a spreadsheet cell.
CSV or TSV?
| Format | When |
|---|---|
| CSV | Opening the file with Excel or LibreOffice |
| TSV | Reading it with analysis tools (R, pandas), or when cells contain commas and semicolons |
Excel with regional settings: two precautions already included
The exported file contains two invisible details that avoid the two classic problems:
- an encoding marker that stops Excel from turning medieval diacritics into garbled characters;
- a technical first line (
sep=,) telling Excel which separator is used. Without it, with regional settings that use the semicolon (such as Italian), the whole row ends up in the first cell.
If you read the file with analysis tools, skip that first line or use TSV, which does not need it.
Security
Cells starting with =, +, @ or - are neutralised with an apostrophe: otherwise Excel would interpret them as formulas. When the file is reimported into ArchiView the apostrophe is removed, so an export and import round trip does not alter shelfmarks.
The round trip works
An archive exported to CSV can be reimported into ArchiView without loss: columns are recognised, and so are document types. See Importing from CSV.
This is a deliberate guarantee: an export that cannot come back in is not an open format, it is a dead end.