Principally, Discuss Data is open to all formats and all types of files – from text to audio or video files. However, to ensure broad and long term usability, Discuss Data encourages data creators to submit their data in commonly used or convertible data formats, for example the interoperable REFI-QDA Standard for exchanging processed qualitative data between QDA software programs.

Commonly occurring file extensions are:

• txt - plain text format can be opened using any text editor or word processing software such as MS Word
• xls, xlsx - excel spreadsheets can be opened by spreadsheet software such as MS Excel
• xml - extensible markup language files can be opened with web browsers, spreadsheet software or text editors
• csv - database tables can be opened with spreadsheet software such as MS Excel
• rtf - rich text format can be opened using any word processing software
• pdf - portable document files can be opened using Adobe Acrobat Reader
• htm - html/web files can be opened using a web browser or MS Word
• sav - SPSS system files, requires SPSS to open
• por - SPSS portable files, requires SPSS to open
• dta - Stata files, requires Stata to open
• qdpx - interoperable file format for different qualitative analysis software like ATLAS.ti, Dedoose, f4analyse, MAXQDA, NVivo
• tab - tab delimited text files can be opened by spreadsheet software such as MS Excel