Unwind

What is Unwind

Unwind is a powerful feature that allows you to separate multi-valued fields that usually appear as semi-colon separated values in an exported file as individual rows for a more discrete analysis in an Excel or CSV file, especially when exported with other fields of interest. Continue reading to learn more about unwind.

How Unwind works

When a multi-valued field is unwound, each value appears in a separate row. When the multi-valued field is unwound along with single-valued fields, those single-valued fields will repeat for each of the values associated with the multi-valued field.

How to Unwind

The Unwind feature is available via the Export button. Enter a title for the file, then select the multi-valued field(s) to unwind from the Field(s) to unwind dropdown menu. Next, select CSV or Excel as your file type. Finally, select the field(s) to be included in the unwind. After making your selections click Export. When the export is complete, the file will appear at the bottom of your screen to be opened.

Unwinding Several multi-valued fields

More than one multi-valued field can be unwound. Like the example above, each value in a multi-valued field appears in a separate row and single values associated with the multi-valued field repeat.

Unwinding Structure Fields

Structured fields are fields that appear in table format within record view, for example the Authors field in Record View. When unwinding a structured field, select the structured field from the Unwind dropdown menu, then select the sub-fields of interest from the field selection groups along with any additional single-valued field(s). Some sub-fields are multi-valued themselves.

Best Practices

When using the Unwind feature, it is best to keep additional fields limited as unwinding creates large export files. The purpose of Unwind is to allow you to explore multi-valued fields in isolation as they relate to other fields of interest. Keep exports using Unwind focused to just the fields of interest. For this reason, you will notice that some fields are disabled and not selectable to be included in an Unwind export, such as Abstract, because the field tend to be long and can create large exports that take a long time to export and open.