@OliverKL A Qualtrics-specific thing and much more reliable format of export/import a survey is QSF. TXT is clumsy, if you just want to document thing without intend to import it back, try Word format.

For this use case that won't really work, unless I want to write my own interpreter for converting a txt format to qsf -- I'm considering it honestly. We're hoping to keep the survey under version control in GitHub and just export it to qualtrics when it's finished.

@OliverKL What’s your use case? Track change the whole thing?

@dxconnamnguyen Pretty much -- we have a large team of student contributers that need to add to a lengthy survey that will get sent out annually; not all of them have access to qualtrics. 

Also I just personally find the GUI clunky and would like to avoid using it as much as possible. Trying to avoid the nightmare scenario of getting sent a bunch of emails with suggested changes and having to add them in manually and make my own log of who-added-what haha.

@OliverKL Well, Qualtrics do have it’s own version control with log, restoration..etc.. just ask your student to put detail of what they did in the description: https://www.qualtrics.com/support/survey-platform/survey-module/survey-publishing-versions/
For Qualtrics access, you can check back with the university account manager for the student.

@dxconnamnguyen Honestly I would really prefer to avoid having to use the GUI editor if at all possible. I'll keep messing around with the text importing feature and if that doesn't work I may see if it's possible to parse through the qsf files.

@OliverKL I used to try to make some surgery with the QSF and honestly I still can’t figure out what its made of. I might involve some kind of codec that Qualtrics own/trademark.