You need an account to save and publish your charts in DataPicta. Creating an account is free and allows you to securely store your visualizations in the cloud.

Saving a chart stores it in your personal DataPicta account. You can access your saved charts from any device by logging into your account. This is useful for keeping your work organized and easily retrievable.

Publishing a chart makes it publicly accessible. When you publish a chart, it generates a unique URL that you can share with others. Published charts can be embedded in websites or shared on social media. The "Publish dialog" has a purple theme.

Saving a Chart

To save a chart you van click the "Save" icon in the top-right corner of the application, the icon looks like a floppy disk. You will also find a "Save" option in the menu. If you are not logged in the icon is greyed out meaning you cannot save until you log in or create an account.

The Save Dialog

When you click the "Save" icon or menu option, a dialog will appear showing you all the charts and folders in your account. You can choose to save the current chart in an existing folder or create a new folder for better organization. You must provide a name for the chart before saving. Once you have selected the folder and entered a name, click the "Save" button to store your chart in your account. The "Save dialog" has a blue theme.

Loading a Chart

To load a previously saved chart, click the "Maps" icon in the top-right corner of the application. The same dialog as the save dialog will appear, showing you all your saved charts and folders. The save button is replaced with a open button. Select the chart you want to load and click the "Open" button. Alternatively, you can double-click the chart to load it directly.

Organizing Charts

In the top bar of the save/load dialog, you will find 6 icons that help you manage your charts and folders.

Sort

If you have many charts and folders you can sort them by name, date or size. All options can be sorted in ascending or descending order. If there are folders they are always shown first.

View

Chart and folders can be viewed in two ways, as a list or as a grid with thumbnails. The grid view shows a small preview of each chart which can help you find the right chart faster, the grid is also the default view. The list view does not show previews but gives but takes less space so you can see more charts at once.

New Folder

You can create a new folder to organize your charts better. Click the "New Folder" icon, enter a name for the folder, and click "Ok". The new folder will appear in the current folder. By double-clicking a folder you can enter it and save or load charts inside it. Use the breadcrumb navigation at the top-left of the dialog to move back to a parent folder, alternatively you can use the "backspace" button on your keyboard to go back to the parent folder.

Move

If you want to move a chart to another folder, select the chart by clicking on it once, then click the "Move" icon (an arrow). A dialog will appear allowing you to choose the destination folder. Select the desired folder and click "Move" to relocate the chart.

You can also move multiple charts and folders at once by selecting them while holding the "Ctrl" key (or "Cmd" key on Mac) and then clicking the "Move" icon.

Rename

If you want to rename a chart or folder, select it by clicking on it once, then click the "Rename" icon (a pencil). A dialog will appear where you can enter the new name. After typing the new name, click "Ok" to apply the change.

Delete

To delete a chart or folder, select it by clicking on it once, then click the "Delete" icon (a trash can). A confirmation dialog will appear to prevent accidental deletions. If you are sure you want to delete the selected item, click "Delete" in the confirmation dialog.

If you delete a chart the chart is moved to the trash folder, from where it can be restored later. If this is the first time you delete a chart a trash folder is created automatically at the root level.

You can select multiple charts to delete by holding the "Ctrl" key (or "Cmd" key on Mac) while clicking on the items you want to delete.

You can only delete folders that are empty. If you try to delete a folder that contains charts or other folders the trash icon will be grayed out.

You can not delete charts that are published. To delete a published chart you must first unpublish it.

If you delete charts in the trash folder they are permanently deleted and cannot be restored.

Searching Charts

On top of the save/load dialog you will find a search field. You can use this field to search for charts and folders by name. As you type, the list of charts and folders will be filtered to show only those that match your search query. This makes it easier to find specific charts, especially if you have a large number of saved visualizations.

Publishing a Chart

After saving a chart, you can publish it by clicking the "Publish" icon next to the "Save" icon in the bottom-right corner of the dialog.

The Publish Dialog

After clicking the "Publish" button, a new dialog will appear. You chart will be published immediately which usually takes just a few seconds. Once the chart is published, the dialog will show you the chart itself on the left side and sharing options on the right side. The "Publish dialog" has a purple theme.

Chart Preview

The chart preview is an iframe, this is different from the chart in the main application and proves that the published chart is working correctly. On the left side you will find several options to share your published chart:

Sharing Options

• Embed with HTML: This option provides you with an HTML iframe code snippet that you can copy and paste into your website or blog to embed the published chart directly on your page.
• Embed with Url: This option gives you the URL of where the charts is actually hosted, you can use this URL on platforms that support embedding via URL (oEmbed protocol).
• Social Media: This option gives the URL of the published chart that you can share on social media platforms like Facebook, X/Twitter, or LinkedIn (open graph protoco). Simply copy the URL and paste it into your social media post to share your visualization with your followers. Depending on the platform, a preview of the chart is shown. You may also write a title or description to go along with the link.
• Email: This option allows you to share the published chart via email or any other messaging platform. It provides a URL that will open the chart inside the DataPicta application allowing the recipient to see and edit the chart directly. You can use this option to collaborate with others or simply share your work.

Managing Published Charts

• SEO: You can set a title and description for your published chart to improve its visibility in search engines. The title and description will be used as meta tags when the chart is shared, meta tags help search engines understand the content of your chart and can improve its ranking in search results, it does not change anything inside the chart itself.
• Backlink: Depending on your account type (Paid vs Free) a backlink to DataPicta is added to the published chart. Free accounts always have a backlink, paid accounts can choose to remove the backlink if they want to. For paid accounts the backlink is off by default. But you can toggle it on or off at any time, if you toggle it off your quota will be reduced accordingly.
• Unpublish: If you no longer want your chart to be publicly accessible, you can unpublish it by clicking the "Unpublish" button in the publish dialog. This will remove the chart from public view, be aware that unpublishing will remove the sharing options and the unique URL will no longer work. Only do this if have you have taken the chart offline and no longer wish to share it. You can republish the chart later but the sharing options will change.