Hi all,
Does anyone know if, once a course has been created, it is possible to export the word lists, definitions, etc., into a spreadsheet? I know one can import from a spreadsheet, but I would like to be able to do the reverse.
Thanks! Mossey
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@Mossey As far as I know, it isn’t possible but I know many of us would dearly like to be able to do it! 
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Ah, okay - thanks! I feared this may be the case. I guess from now on I will create my lists in a spreadsheet and then import them into Memrise.
Thanks!
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Thanks Rabolde! I had actually just worked out the copy and paste method and it works a treat.
So - figured it out! I will have to do this as a series of three posts as the system will only let me add one image per post.
- Go to the level view of the course you have created.
- Select the content, words, definitions etc. Make sure to start the selection process from the top left item. Hit copy.
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3.Create a spreadsheet with the same headings. Make sure to include the audio, and presumably also image, headings if you have these. You must also create an extra column in the first column that will be blank.
[Note - I am doing this in Mac iWorks Numbers because Microsoft Excel for Mac cannot handle Arabic script, but it should work in Microsoft Excel also]
4.Select the first (top left) cell. Hit 'Paste and Match Style".
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5.You now have a spreadsheet containing the content of your course level. It might need a little tweaking, but it should be pretty much there. For instance, for some reason the first row starts in the first (left most) column, but the succeeding rows start in the second column (this is why you needed to create a first additional blank column). Therefore you will need to cut and paste the row so that it starts from the second column. You can then delete the unnecessary columns, e.g. the first empty column and the audio column. Done!
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Archived here: http://web.archive.org/web/20160508101324/http://www.memrise.com/thread/1285485/
There is also https://www.import.io/ and perhaps also some other methods.
I moved the discussion to Memrise How To’s as this is not only relevant to course creators.
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Thanks Arete_Hime!
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Thanks Rabolde,
Here is one suggestion from that link that seems to work. Pasted below for our benefit and in case we lose access to the Forum.
This is how I’ve figured out how to export my course into excel or OpenOffice, using FireFox as my internet browser:
Go to your course, and select edit course.
Hold Control, and with the mouse left click over the first word of the first column you want to copy
Then, still holding the mouse button and control, go down over the words you want to copy. They will automatically select. You can also mouse over any other columns you want to copy.
If you reach the bottom of the page and you want to scroll down, then you can let go of control and press the down arrow on the keyboard. DON’T LET GO OF THE MOUSE BUTTON, keep holding it
When you are done scrolling down, simply move the cursor over the next word and press and hold control again. Then repeat as necessary till you reach the bottom of the list
Once you are at the bottom of the list, you can let go of both control and the mouse. Right click on the selected column and click ‘copy’
Then go into an empty excel worksheet, and ‘paste’ your data into column A
With this method everything pastes nicely for me and there is no need to reformat or edit anything after pasting.
I’ve also tested this method with OpenOffice Calc, and it worked fine.
This is a good method if for whatever reason you can’t deal with
plugins or you feel importing with excel is a security risk for your
computer.
Posted by Tommy3000 11/7/15 (6 months ago)
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Thanks Mossey, this is very clear and probably makes my post superfluous.
Well yours has some useful stuff regarding the ctrl button, which is not necessary when using Chrome on Mac, but might well be when using windows and firefox as described. 
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Yeah, that’s how I keep (or used to keep) the safety back-up of my database updated, even though in Excel you can’t really keep track of alternatives, which is also a huge part of a course. (The order of the database is still messed up though, so it’s not really possible to regularly perform back-ups.)
On a related note… do you have any idea, how to archive which entry is on which level?
You can always download all the levels in html format, but that’s just clunky and way too much time (we are talking about about 300 levels and three databases with over 11000 records and three testing directions across a monster of a course).
There was a suggestion back, when there was a feedback forum, I believe by the Memrise Team, that there should be a function to list, which levels a given record is included in. Has anything come out of that one?
Wow, yeah, that’s a lot to back up. I am only just creating my first course so don’t have experience with that. Regarding the different levels, what I am doing is using the method described above to cut and paste the entries into a spreadsheet. I am making one workbook for the course, and then each level is a different sheet within the workbook. So far I have four levels on four sheets in the course workbook. Doing that 300 times would be rather a pain, but I guess you could get it done in a few hours? Then when you update, or create new, levels you would have to replace the older sheet with a new version or add a new sheet. You could then find a given word by typing it into the search function on the spreadsheet, and that would tell you which level the word is in. I am actually doing that because I want to be able to access the spreadsheet on my phone so I can use it as a dictionary when I am out and about, and hopefully it won’t be so bad if I am doing it from the beginning. But yeah, that is really clunky and long winded, and doesn’t help with the alternatives.
Meant the last post to be a reply to poggi.
import.io supposedly allows you to quickly export multiple pages:
http://web.archive.org/web/20160509041640/http://www.memrise.com/thread/1759580/
@mikatu I just tried import.io.They have a bulk option where you can enter a list of URLs and download it all at once. I just downloaded over 1100 items from 40 different levels in just a matter of seconds. Worked great!
http://web.archive.org/web/20160508101324/http://www.memrise.com/thread/1285485/
There is a nice plugin for excel that allows you to select content from the web and import it in excel. it even automatically recognizes tables on web pages. So you’d just need to open excel, go to data>from web, insert the link of your list, and then select some fields to export. It’s quite easyhere is the link: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/downloads/db5286b6-0bb0-4668-9ebc-c3e9b43a0683/
Once you have the output, you’d have to look at it to see if every line/item already includes the level and testing direction, or if you can easily manipulate it to have them.
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Unless I am mistaken, all these fudge solutions seem extremely messy and I haven’t achieved a satisfactory backup yet.
It would be nice - and surely fairly easy - for the MemRise team to create an easy back up facility for Courses Creators and Custodians.
Please.
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Agreed. This is needed.
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If you have some programming experience there is a script out there that could do this: http://www.memrise.com/course/32267/2000-indonesian-words/thread/1347089/#comment-196801
The thread I linked you to is actually a script for programmatically bulk-uploading audio but the first part of it requires you to download the course database. So you can use this if you can figure out how to use it.
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