Scoring and recodes are two different things. It seems you are intermixing the two. Recodes are what get stored as an answer to question. Scores are stored in their own field by scoring category and apply across questions.

Thanks so much for your response, you’re absolutely correct, I am intermixing the two.

Basically, I am using a Likert scale in a matrix table and certain items need to be reverse coded. When I reverse code the items on Qualtrics, it isn’t translating those reverse responses on the exported excel sheet - does this make sense? I’m obviously doing something wrong and now I’m just confused!

With a Likert matrix all rows will have the same answer recodes because they all use the same scale. The only way to reverse the answers for some rows would be to reverse the order of the answers for those rows with JavaScript.

Scoring probably isn’t what you want. You would have to create a scoring category for each reversed row and use those instead of the answers. 

An alternative would be to use MC questions for each row instead of a matrix and code them as needed.