Import a chart from Reddit
The alignment chart app on Reddit can turn any chart into a long block of text called an export code. Paste that code below and the chart opens in the editor here, with its labels, its layout, its colours and its pictures, saved on this device as a draft.
How to move a chart across
- Open the chart in the Reddit app. Find the chart you want to bring over and choose Export from its menu. It shows the whole chart as one block of text and gives you a button to copy it.
- Copy the whole code. A code is far longer than it looks, often thousands of characters, and half a code decodes into nothing at all. Use the copy button rather than selecting the text by hand.
- Paste it in the box above and press Import. The code is decoded here in your browser, the pictures it points at are copied to our own storage, and the result is saved as a draft.
- 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.
USA map charts cannot be imported yet. The map editor here is built on a different model of what a map is, and a bad conversion would be worse than an honest no.
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 colour 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 point at the image hosts Reddit runs, and leaving them there causes two real problems. Reddit does not let another site read the pixels of those files, so a PNG exported here would come back with holes where the pictures should be. And an image on Reddit disappears for good when the post carrying it is deleted, which takes half the chart with it.
So the import copies them. The list of picture addresses in the code is sent to our server, which fetches each one and saves its own copy, and the chart is rewritten to point at that copy instead. Only that list of addresses leaves your browser during an import. The chart itself stays on this device until you choose to publish it. A picture the site has already stored is recognised and reused rather than saved twice, and only the image hosts Reddit runs are ever fetched: any other address in a code is left alone rather than pulled into our storage.
The copy is best effort, and the page says so when it falls short. Up to three hundred distinct pictures are copied per import, and the pass stops starting new batches after about thirty seconds rather than leaving you watching a spinner. Anything that could not be copied, most often because the original post was deleted years ago, keeps loading from its old address and is named on screen instead of being quietly dropped. A chart that imports with a warning is still a whole chart.
If the import does not work
Four 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.
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 Reddit, which means they may vanish later and will be missing from a PNG export. Replacing them in the editor uploads permanent copies, 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.
Do I need an account to import a chart?
No. 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 only starts to matter later, when you want your published charts collected on one profile or want to 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 first three hundred distinct pictures are copied to our storage and any beyond that keep loading from where they already are, and the page tells you when that has happened. Importing several large charts one after another can also hit a limit on how many pictures one device may copy in five minutes, which clears on its own.
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
Seven formats, all free, all in the browser, none of them needing an account.