Center for Teaching, Research & Learning
Research Support Group at the Social Science Research Lab
American University, Washington, D.C.
http://www.american.edu/provost/ctrl/
202-885-3862
Exporting from NVivo
After spending several hours working on your project in NVivo, it’s a good idea to back up your file to
non-NVivo file formats. These can be useful for sharing portions of the project with team members or
progress reports to faculty advisers. It’s also an easily accessible record if you are unsure of future access
to NVivo. Below is a list of elements of a project you may want to export. You can find export options in
one of two ways:
1. Open the External Data ribbon to locate the “export” button
2. Select the item(s) in the list view. Right click and select export
Nodes
You have two basic options for downloading nodes. “List” is a list of all nodes but without content.
“Content” is the content of one node and can only be exported one node at a time.
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List of your nodes:
o Open the Node drawer. In List view of Nodes, click on a node. Right click or use
“external data” ribbon.
o Export list will prompt you to save a file formatted as .xls
Content of one node
o Open the Node drawer. In List view of nodes, click on a node. Right click or use “external
data” ribbon.
o Select Export Node
 Export Entire content: As HTML file
 Export Reference view: As Word doc
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Export Summary view: As Excel file. It produces a list of counts and coverage in
each source for that node
Metadata such as source descriptions, annotations, relationships, links and
memo links can all be exported.
Coded Source
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Open the Source drawer. In List view of sources, click on the source you wish to export.
o In the View ribbon, turn on the highlighting you wish to export.
o In the Source list view, click the source so that it is highlighted blue.
o In the External Data ribbon, select export or right click the highlighted source name.
o Select Export Document
 Select which metadata you wish to export as well: source descriptions,
annotations, relationships, links and memo links.
o Click OK
o Choose where to save the document in .doc format.
If you wish to save the coding stripes as well, this is the best option:
o Turn on the coding stripes view; you may also want the highlights view visible.
o Right click in the open source view or on the source name in the list view. Select Print.
o If you’d like to save additional metadata, select those here.
o Click OK and “Create PDF” rather than sending to a printer.
o While viewing the PDF, set up the view to be 2 pages displayed on one page. You can
then see the coding stripes to the right of the original text.
Transcripts
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Click on audio or video source in list view.
From the External Data ribbon, select export > export document/transcript.
Select transcript instead of Entire Content.
o Entire content will produce a .html file that includes the media and its transcript.
Choose location to save file in .doc format.
Attribute Classification Sheet
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From the Classification drawer, select the appropriate Node Classification.
In the Home ribbon, click open. This will open the Classification Sheet in its spreadsheet view.
Make sure the node classification is highlighted blue in the list view.
From the External Data ribbon > Export > Export Classification Sheet
Export to (choose location to save).
Change any settings
Click OK to save file in .xls format.
Graphs, Models, Charts and other visualization options.
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Open the model or chart.
Select the name of the model from the list view so it is highlighted blue.
From the External Data ribbon, click Export > Export Model.
You can save as a .jpg, .gif or .bmp file.
o Tag clouds can be exported as Word documents.
o Tree maps export as an image.
o A cluster analysis can export as an image.
Last edited 4/25/2012 Page 2 of 2