How to organize (and delete) visualizations

Creating charts is one challenge; organizing them is another one. Especially if you work as part of a team or create multiple charts per week, you need a good overview of your ever-extending chart portfolio. You can find this overview when you click the button “Archive” in the upper-right. If you’re already logged in, here's a direct link. 

In the following article, we'll go through the different options you have on this site.

How can I delete or duplicate visualizations? 

If you click on a visualization thumbnail, the chart will appear in a pop-up window with an option to Edit, Duplicate, Publish or export or Delete the visualization. 

Another option: If you move over a chart thumbnail with your mouse, you'll see a button with three dots in the top-right corner. Click on it and a little menu opens. Now you can rename, edit, duplicate or delete it:

How can I create new folders? 

Inside the Team folder, you can create a new folder by clicking the  + New button at the top. You can also create a new visualization inside the Team folder from the same dropdown menu. 

You can add as many hierarchy levels as you want by going inside the folder and clicking on + New. 

How can I rename or delete folders?

To rename or delete folders that you've created, hover over the folder in the left menu and click on the three dots that appear next to the folder. A little menu pops open. Here you can add a rename this very folder or delete it. 

If you try to delete a folder that contains visualizations, these visualizations will not be deleted. They will move to the next-higher folder. If you try to delete a folder that contains other folders, they will also be moved to its parent folder.

How can I organize my visualizations?

It's up to you! Here are some ideas:

• By language: Maybe you're a bilingual newspaper and want to sort your visualizations in “French Charts” and “English Charts”. 
• By department: Economics, Politics, etc.
• By newspaper, if you’re part of a big newsgroup that owns several ones. 
• According to your processes: “In Review”, “Social Media worthy” etc. 

Once you know your structure, you can easily drag and drop a visualization or entire folders into other folders. You can also select multiple charts when clicking on the little checking box that's in the top-left of every thumbnail, and then drag all visualizations together:

I'm part of a team. How can I make my visualizations private?

You'll see the name of your teams and the charts you and your team members created in the folders under ▼SHARED. To make a chart private, you can move it into a private folder named “My archive” under ▼PRIVATE. Only you can access charts inside 'My archive'. That means that you can drag any charts (e.g. your drafts) to your private folder, work on them, and move them back to the team folder once you’re happy with it. 

How can I search and sort visualizations?

Search for visualizations

In the top-right, you'll find a powerful search. No matter in which chart you currently are, it searches across all charts, maps, and tables you have access to: your team charts and your personal charts. 

Here's some tips for using that search: 

• Search terms have to be complete: A search for "Olym" won't find visualizations that contain the word "Olympics".
• The search will find all visualizations that contain the search term in its title, description, notes, aria description, and custom fields.
• Our search supports Boolean searches: By searching for e.g. "+Corona -Germany", our search will find all visualizations that include the word "Corona" except the ones that include the word "Germany".

Sort your visualizations according to date, title, author and status

But there's another way to search for your visualizations: Below the search box, you'll find an "Sorted by ..." button. Here you can sort your charts based on different parameters: 

• Last edit date: the last time someone was actively working on this chart
• Creation date: the date when the visualization was created 
• Publish date: the date when someone (re-)published the visualization for the last time
• Title: alphabetically by visualization title
• Status: "Published", "Draft" or "Just data", meaning that just data was uploaded by no visualization type chosen yet
• Author: great option when you're part of a team and you quickly want to find the visualizations that you (or a coworker of yours) created

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to support@datawrapper.de.