The point of it…
Save as Text means save your data as a plain text file (as opposed to the WordSmith format for retrieving the data another day). It is usually quicker to copy selected text into the clipboard, e.g. if you simply want to insert your results into your word processor.
If you want to copy the data in colour, you should definitely use the clipboard.
In the case of a concordance, if you want only the words visible in your concordance line (not the number of characters mentioned below), use the clipboard and then Paste or Paste Special in graphics format.
How to do it
This function can be reached by Save As as shown here or Print to File (via F3 or ) or Copy () to text file.
There are several options for saving in other formats
These menu choices up a Save as window as explained here for Concord.
Options include:
header |
words you want to save at the start of the data (leave blank if not wanted); |
numbered |
whether the numbers visible in the column at the left are saved too |
column separator |
by default a tab but you can specify something else to go between visible columns |
rows |
all/any which you have highlighted/a specific range, e.g. 1-10, 5-, -3 |
columns |
all/any which you have highlighted/a specific range (column 1 is the one with the numbers) |
You can then easily retrieve the data in your spreadsheet, database, word-processor, etc. (If you want to use it as a table in a word processor, first save as text, then in your word-processor choose the Convert Text to Table option if available. Choose to separate text at tabs.)
Note: The Excel spreadsheet () save will look something like this:
The words are visible from row 18 onwards; above them we get some summary data. The 1/8, 2/8 etc. section splits the data into eighths; thus 100% of the Texts data (column E) is in the 8th section, whereas nearly all the data (98.8%) are in the smallest section in terms of word frequency, because so many words come once only. You'll be asked whether to compute this summary data if you choose to save as Excel.
In the case of a concordance line, saving as text will save as many "characters in 'save as text'" as you have set (adjustable in the Controller Concord Settings). The reason for this is that you will probably want a fixed number of characters, so that when using a non proportional font the search-words line up nicely. See also: Concord save and print.
Each worksheet can only handle up to 65,000 rows and 256 columns. If necessary there will be continuation sheets.
If your data contains a plot or a time-line you will also get another worksheet in the Excel file, looking like this.
Here the details of a time-line are found in a second tab in Excel, showing the word-counts for each time-period across the top and the number of hits for each search-word below.
The dispersion plot data here show the positions of each hit for the various search-words in different texts. You could process those numbers in another program of your choice. The line called Overall show all the hits (up to 30 extra plot-division work-sheets).
In the case of XML text (), you may get a large .XML file.
See also: Excel Files in batch processing