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OCLC Support

Why can't I export my collection in .txt format ?

Applies to
  • CONTENTdm
Answer

Sometimes there can be issues that stops collections being exported into a tab delimited file (.txt)

When in the Admin site, if nothing seems to load or happen after you have selected to export your collection data in a Tab-delimited  file, it could indicate there is an issue with your collection and the metadata within.

  • If this happens a file will not be created after selecting Next
  • If you try another method, such as xml, you may find this will work for you instead

These are a few things that can happen in metadata that will stop an export using a tab-delimited file:

  • The URL is far too long  (if this is the case you can change the URL to be shorter, via the Project Client)
  • The metadata was created, with some bad OCR data in it
  • Some entries have some HTML coding left in the data, such as </br> closing tags which will break the export 

If a long URL is the issue, you can bring the URL record back into a project from Find in Collection > Add to Project. Right-click on the record and select Replace item with URL item.

This option only exists via the right-click menu and not on the main Edit menu. This option can only be used contextually, only URL items can be replaced with new URLs.

Alternatively, you can use the project client to replace a single item in a collection.

If you have tried these options and the xml export does not work, please contact OCLC Support for further advice.

Additional information

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Page ID
13081