Import a chart from Reddit or mapchart
Three things fit in the box below. The alignment chart app on Reddit turns any chart into a long block of text called an export code, mapchart saves your map as a small .txt file, and a chart file saved from this site is plain JSON. Paste any of them and it opens in the editor here, saved on this device as a draft.
How to move a chart across
- Get the code, or the file. In the Reddit app, open the chart and choose Export: it shows the whole chart as one block of text with a button to copy it. In mapchart, use Save map or Download configuration, which gives you a small .txt file of the map you were working on. A chart file somebody saved from this site works the same way: open it and copy what is inside.
- Copy the whole thing. A code is far longer than it looks, often thousands of characters, and half a code decodes into nothing at all. A mapchart .txt opens in any text editor or notes app: select all of it, first character to last, and copy.
- Paste it in the box above and press Import. It is decoded here in your browser and saved as a draft on this device. Pictures keep their original addresses. The box works out for itself which of the formats you pasted.
- Keep editing. The chart opens in the editor for its format, with every tool the site has. Nothing is published until you press Publish, and nothing is public until you share the link.
What comes across
A classic alignment grid arrives as an alignment chart: the same axis labels, the same cells in the same places, the same background and the same styling. A custom canvas arrives as a freeform canvas, with each image, text box, shape and drawing where you left it. A live fill chart arrives as an ordinary grid, because the session it was running on Reddit belongs to Reddit and cannot follow the chart here.
Anything missing from the code is filled in from the defaults of the editor it lands in, so an old export made before a feature existed still opens rather than failing. A raw chart JSON works too, if that is the form you happen to have.
A mapchart configuration arrives as a map, with its groups as legend rows and every region it colored painted the same color here. USA map charts exported from the Reddit app are the one thing still left out: that app models a map differently again, and a bad conversion would be worse than an honest no.
Bringing a map over from mapchart
A mapchart configuration is a small JSON file with a .txt name, holding the color groups you built, the regions in each one, the label you gave each group, and the page settings: background, borders, the fill for regions you never touched, the legend title and its corner. All of that is read. Your groups become the legend, in the order you put them in rather than re-sorted, and each region they name is painted the same color on our map.
The regions are the part that needs care, because their catalog of maps is larger than ours and their files identify a region four different ways depending on the map and the year: two-letter and three-letter country codes, the ISO codes for provinces and departments, and postal or FIPS codes for the United States. Each one is matched against the real region list of the map it lands on, and anything that matches nothing is named on screen instead of being dropped in silence. A file that lands 46 of 50 states imports as a map with 46 states colored and a note about the other four.
The file says which of their maps it came from, and where that map has an equivalent here (world, Europe, the United States by state or by county, Canada, and any country we can open into its own provinces or departments) it is used directly. Where it does not, the region codes themselves decide which map fits best and the page says that it guessed. What does not come across: their zoom and crop, their fonts, pattern fills, and anything their newer templates draw that we have no data for. There are no pictures in one of their files, so nothing is fetched from anywhere when you import one.
What is deliberately left behind
An export code carries the chart, not the thread around it. The winner credits the Reddit app attaches to a cell, the usernames, the avatars, the comment text, the permalinks and the runner-up lists, are all dropped on the way in. They belong to people who posted on Reddit and who never agreed to be republished on another site, so importing them would be taking something that was not offered.
The chart itself is untouched by that. Every label, picture and color you placed is yours and comes across whole.
The import is a copy rather than a move. The chart on Reddit stays exactly as it was, the imported draft stops tracking it the moment it lands, and you can import the same code again as often as you like: each import makes a separate draft.
What happens to your pictures
Pictures in an export code keep the addresses they already have, usually on the image hosts Reddit runs. Import does not copy those files to Tiermaps. The chart is saved on this device as a draft, and nothing is sent to our servers until you later confirm Share or Publish.
Pictures still load from their original host. An image on Reddit can disappear if the original post is deleted, and a PNG export here uses a server relay to read those pixels because Reddit does not let another site read them in the browser.
A mapchart file has no pictures in it, so nothing is fetched from anywhere when you import one. A chart file saved from this site already carries whatever addresses it had when it was saved.
If the import does not work
Seven things can go wrong, and the page names each one rather than failing silently. What each one means:
That does not look like a valid export code
Almost always a partial copy. The code has to arrive complete, from its first character to its last, and a code that was retyped, truncated by a chat app or copied out of a screenshot cannot be recovered. Go back to the Export screen and copy it again.
USA map charts cannot be imported yet
The code decoded correctly and it is a map. Classic grids and custom canvases are the two kinds that convert today. Everything else in the chart, including a map you rebuild here by hand, is unaffected.
Some regions in the file are not on this map
A mapchart file named regions our version of that map does not hold, most often because their template is a finer or a newer one than ours. The map imported with everything that did match, and the ones left out are listed by the name the file used, so you can add them by hand or tell whether the map is worth keeping.
The closest map it fits was used instead
The file came from one of their templates that has no equivalent here, so the map was chosen from the region codes inside the file rather than from its name. It is a guess and the page says so: check that the shapes are the ones you expect before you publish.
That mapchart file has no colored regions in it
The file is one of theirs and it parsed, but every group in it is empty, so there is nothing to paint. Color at least one region in mapchart, save the configuration again, and paste the new file.
The chart decoded fine but could not be saved on this device
The draft is stored in this browser, and private windows and locked-down browser settings can block that storage entirely. Try the same code in an ordinary window, or in another browser.
Some of its images could not be copied
The chart imported and is already saved. Those particular pictures still load from their original host, which means they may vanish later. Replacing them in the editor stores fresh copies on this device, and the rest of the chart needs nothing.
Common questions
Where do I find the export code?
In the alignment chart app on Reddit. Open the chart and choose Export from its menu, and the app shows the code with a button to copy it. There is no code hidden inside a Reddit post or a link to one: it has to come from the app itself, which means you need to be able to open the chart there.
Where do I find the mapchart file?
In mapchart itself, from the Save map or Download configuration button, which hands you a small .txt file named after the map you were working on. It is plain text: open it in any editor or notes app, select everything, and paste it into the box above. The file you already have on disk from months ago works exactly the same, and so does one a friend sent you.
Does the whole mapchart map come across?
The parts that make it a map do: every colored region, the color groups with their labels as the legend, the background, the borders, the fill for untouched regions, and the legend title and corner. What does not: their zoom and crop, their fonts, pattern fills, and any region on a template we have no data for, which is named on screen rather than dropped quietly. Their maps and ours are drawn from different data, so the outlines will not be pixel for pixel the same.
Do I need an account to import a chart?
Not to import one. The import runs in your browser and the chart is saved on this device, exactly like a chart you start from scratch here. An account starts to matter at the point you publish, which is the one action that needs one, and it is also what collects your published charts on one profile and lets you open a draft on a different device.
Is the chart published when I import it?
No. It arrives as a private draft that only this browser can see. Publishing is a separate step with its own button, and until you press it nobody else can reach the chart, including us.
Can I send a chart the other way, from here back to Reddit?
Yes, for alignment charts. The Code button in the alignment chart editor produces the same format the Reddit app reads, so a chart can make the round trip. One thing to watch: that app refuses a code whose chart has no title, so give the chart a title before you export it.
What happens to a chart with hundreds of pictures?
It imports. The pictures keep the addresses they already have, and the draft is saved on this device. Nothing is copied to our storage during import, so a large chart does not wait on a re-host pass.
Does importing change anything on Reddit?
No. An export code is a snapshot of the chart as it was when the code was made, and nothing here writes back. Editing the imported copy has no effect on the original, and neither does deleting it.
Or start a new chart here
Every chart format on the site: all free, all in the browser, none of them needing an account.