You can download the data associated with a set of surveys from the corresponding Survey List page. You can download the survey data on its own as a spreadsheet, or — if your project has the feature enabled — the survey data and the attachment files (photographs and so on) together in a single ZIP file.

Navigate to the survey list using the links on your workspace home page or on the sidebar menu:

Downloading Survey Data as a Spreadsheet

Click the Download button at the top of the survey list page:

The Download Survey Data window appears. Choose the file format you would like:

• Excel (XLSX) — best for opening in spreadsheet apps: Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice, Google Drive, Numbers, and so on. Excel files can contain real, clickable hyperlinks.
• Comma Separated Values (CSV) — a plain text format, compatible with a wider range of apps. If your download has multiple worksheets we'll ZIP them all into a single file.

Click Next to choose how your data should be formatted:

Then click OK. Depending on how your web browser has been configured, it will either ask you what to do with the file or save it to the Downloads folder on your hard drive.

Formatting References to Cartographer

Some columns in your download aren't data as such — they're references to other things on Cartographer: the workspace, project or team a survey belongs to, the survey itself, or a folder of uploaded attachments. Cartographer identifies each of these things with an ID: a long sequence of hexadecimal digits like aaaaaaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeeeeeeeeeee.

IDs are precise but unreadable, so the second step of the download window lets you choose how you'd like references to appear. There are two settings — one for references to workspaces, projects, teams and surveys, and one for references to attachment folders — and the options available depend on the file format you picked.

Excel (XLSX) Downloads

Excel files can contain real hyperlinks, so most of the options below produce a cell you can simply click to open the item on Cartographer.

Cells Referencing Cartographer:

Cells Referencing Attachments:

Attachment folders don't have names of their own, which is why there's no Human Labels option here.

CSV Downloads

CSV files are plain text and can't contain real hyperlinks, so as well as plain names and web addresses you can ask for links written out as HTML or Markdown markup. That's handy if you're pasting the results into a web page, a report, or a tool like Notion.

Cells Referencing Cartographer:

Cells Referencing Attachments:

The five styles produce cells like this:

Human label   MoRPh Rivers
Web address   https://app.cartographer.io/ws/mrs/projects/morphrivers
HTML link     <a href="https://app.cartographer.io/ws/mrs/projects/morphrivers">MoRPh Rivers</a>
Markdown link [MoRPh Rivers](https://app.cartographer.io/ws/mrs/projects/morphrivers)
Raw ID        aaaaaaaa-bbbb-cccc-dddd-eeeeeeeeeeee

Downloading Attachment Files

As well as the spreadsheet, you can download the attachment files — photographs and other uploads — recorded against your surveys. Cartographer prepares a ZIP file containing the spreadsheet and the files, and emails you a link when it's ready.

Requesting a Download

Click Download on the survey list as before, choose your file format, then tick Include attachment files:

Click Next. As well as the formatting options described above, you can now choose what size of photograph to include:

Attachments that aren't photographs (PDFs, for example) are always included at full size.

Underneath the menu we show you how big the download is going to be — the number of surveys, the number of attachments, and the total size. The estimate updates as you change the photograph size, so you can see what a different choice would cost before committing to it.

Waiting for the Download

Click Next to start preparing the file. Cartographer gathers the data on our servers, which can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on how many photographs are involved:

You don't have to wait. You can close the window, carry on using Cartographer, and even shut down your computer — the work happens on our servers, not in your browser.

The Email We Send You

When the file is ready we'll email you:

If something goes wrong while we're preparing the file, we'll email you about that instead, and our team is notified at the same time so we can look into it.

Finding Your Prepared Downloads

Prepared downloads are listed in the Prepared Downloads section of your My Account page. You can access the page via the link here, via the link in your email, or via the Account button in the bottom left of Cartographer:

Look for a section titled Prepared Downloads. The list shows the workspace and project each download came from, when you requested it, the file format and photograph size you chose, its size, and how long it has left before it expires:

Click the download button [1] beside an entry to save it, or the ✕ button [2] to delete it early.

What's Inside the ZIP File

The ZIP file contains:

• The survey data, in the format you chose. Excel downloads are a single workbook; CSV downloads are one file per worksheet.
• The attachment files, in an attachments folder, grouped into a sub-folder per survey. Each filename is prefixed with the attachment's ID, because phones tend to produce the same handful of filenames over and over:

Yorkshire Dales Riverfly Survey Data.xlsx
attachments/1f0c8f4e-.../7b2d51aa-...-IMG_0042.jpg
attachments/1f0c8f4e-.../c93e0f17-...-IMG_0043.jpg

• A list of the attachments — an extra Attachments worksheet in Excel downloads, or an attachments.csv file in CSV downloads. Each row records the survey, the attachment folder, the attachment, its original filename, its file type, its size, and where it sits inside the ZIP file. This is how you match a row in your survey data to a file on disk.

The list also records any attachment that wasn't included — for example, a file for which the photograph size you asked for was never generated — along with the reason. If a photograph seems to be missing, this is the place to look.

Limits

Preparing a download with attachments is a lot of work for our servers, so there are a couple of limits:

• You can prepare up to 5 downloads per hour. If you go over, we'll ask you to try again later and tell you when.
• Very large requests are refused. If yours is, narrow the survey list down with the filters described below, or choose a smaller photograph size, and try again.

Sorting and Filtering Downloads

Downloads respect the same filters and sort orders you have in place on the survey list at the moment you click Download. This applies to both kinds of download: a prepared download with attachments contains exactly the surveys you were looking at when you asked for it, even though it's built later.

You can filter the list using the search field [1] and other filtering controls (team, status, date/time, and location) [2], and sort it by clicking the column headings [2]:

See Browsing Surveys on the Web for more information on sorting and filtering.

Personal Data in Survey Downloads

To protect volunteers' privacy we don't include personal data in survey downloads. We use two fields to help administrators correlate surveys with separately downloaded account data:

• Screen Name — this is a name chosen by the surveyor as their preferred way of being credited for their contributions. Screen names default to surveyors' real names but can be customised on your My Account page (see Changing your Email Address, Password, and Personal Details).
• User ID — this long sequence of hexadecimal digits is a unique code referring to the user's Cartographer user account.

See our Guide to Privacy and GDPR for more information on how we support users' privacy.