How do I download everything that I have ever written on TuDiabetes.org?

Step 1.) Click on your profile picture

Step 2.) Click here to access your profile info

Step 3.) Click Preferences

Step 4.) Scroll down the page and click the button that reads "Request achieve”

Step 5.) When the achieve is complete, you will receive a message in your inbox thru the website that looks like this.

Step 6.) Download that zipped folder to your downloads folder by clicking on it.
Step 7.) Open your downloads folder on your computer.


Step 8.) You will see a zipped folder that looks like this.

Step 9.) Make a new folder somewhere on your PC. I called mine TuDiabetes_Archieve.

Step 9b.) Give that new folder a name, like TuDiabetes_Archieve

Step 9c.) Open your new folder.

Open your Downloads folder by clicking this icon in the upper right hand corner of your screen.

I can see the zipped file here (highlighted in yellow). I want to put that onto my PC.

Drag and drop that zipped folder from your Downloads folder into your new folder.

That zipped folder contains a compressed version of everything that you have ever written on Tu. It might be a very large file. They zip it to make it smaller and faster to download. You will need to unzip it in order to look at anything inside that folder.

They ask that you use a program called 7-zip to do that. You can download it here: https://www.7-zip.org/

You want to make sure that zipped folder is inside another folder because when you unzip it, it is filled with tons of writings and files that will go everywhere. You want those contained inside a folder so they don’t spill out all over the place.

If you have any problems, just ask.

An identical post with these instructions exists on here on Tu How to download everything I have written on Tu - Type 1 and LADA - TuDiabetes Forum

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Then if you want to view the files (assuming they exported as CSV files), I recommend “importing” the CSV file(s) into either Excel or Google Sheets so that you can filter on the date/topic, etc., The CSV files that result in the export are comma delimited and not easy to read or sort through.

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Windows File Explorer will just “open” a .zip file to show you what is inside it if it is double clicked. For .zip files that are stored on a local disk Windows can open them pretty much instantly regardless of size.

Right-click on a .zip file should show a menu with “Extract all…” in it. This produces a pop-up allows the place where the extracted files go to be controlled. By default this is a directory with the same base name as the .zip file; e.g. foo.zip gives a directory name foo (this can be changed.)

Most of the time on Windows it is reasonable just to extract all the files and delete the .zip; there’s no point to the .zip other than reducing the size of the download because similar file compression can be turned on globally on Windows (right click on a disk drive, select “properties” and then check the “compress files” option second from the bottom.) Most people don’t need to do this because it doesn’t help much for photos or videos and these account for most of the space; the TUD archive will be small in comparison.

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Indeed. All the posts are in user_archive.csv:

Column D contains the whole of the post and Column C contains exactly the same comment but apparently in some pseudo HTML format (probably just the markdown generated stuff) which is enclosed in ASCII “” but uses the UTF-8 punctuation internally, so in one of my recent posts I said “quoted” something but it comes out in Column C with a left open double quote and a right close double quote. Excel can’t hack this, maybe OpenSheets (or whatever it is called) can. I had to transfer it to Linux and use vi to find out what the characters are!

It should be fairly simple to un-CSV it into separate files with some sane directory structure but not using a spreadsheet; it’s an awk or python task.

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@mohe0001 Thank you for taking the time to show this! I have preserved my bookmarked posts on the Internet Archive:

Saved TuDiabetes threads on Internet Archive:

DKA ask

https://web.archive.org/web/20251107031040/https://forum.tudiabetes.org/t/dka-ask/92135

When I’m getting old

Pumps in assisted care

https://web.archive.org/web/20251107030053/https://forum.tudiabetes.org/t/pumps-in-assisted-care/90704

Dose calculator app for pump vacation?

Stem-cell therapy for type 1 diabetes reduced patient’s insulin needs by 91%

Inspirational first insulin patients

The anatomy of one insulin dosing decision

T1D and Health: How Long Will You Live?

Glycemic control is not as good of a predictor as metabolic fitness is.

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