Visualization with Word Clouds

If you have any questions or get stuck as you work through this in-class exercise, please ask the instructor for assistance. Have fun!

In addition, if you think you would find it helpful, here is a step-by-step video tutorial for this activity as a suplement to the steps below.

  1. Create a free account at the Word Art website.

    Note: If you have just completed “Activity 4 – Excel Analysis” in this workshop, you can skip Steps 2-4 and proceed directly to Step 5.

  2. Log in to Taguette and open your project so you can see your uploaded documents.

  3. Select the Highlights tab, then click “See all highlights” to view a summary of all the passages you have coded. See all highlights

  4. Exporting your Passages in Preparation for Writing Up Your Research: Exporting all your Passages with their Codes - You can export all your work back to your computer to facilitate the synthesis and write up of your coded data.
    • Click on the Highlights tab, and then the See all highlights button.
    • Look to the right of the screen and click on the Export this view button, and then select the export format to EXCEL. Export this view

  5. Open up the Excel file that you downloaded from Taguette. (This file is usually located in your computer’s Downloads folder.)

  6. In the Excel file, locate the “tag” column.
    • Click on the first cell under the header “tag” (for example, cell C1).
    • Select all the cells in that column that contain tag names.
    • Then copy the cells, go to Edit > Copy (or use Ctrl + C (Windows) / Cmd + C (Mac)) to copy the selected tags.

  7. If you haven’t done so already, create a free account on the Word Art Website in a new tab. (You only need to do this once. If you already have an account, you can skip this step.)

  8. After logginf into Word Art, click on Dashboard. Export this view

  9. On the Dashboard page, click the Create.
    • You may see a “Create with AI” dialog box. For this activity, please ignore that option and select “Start from Scratch.”

  10. In the editor screen, click the Import button. Export this view

  11. In the Import dialog box,
    • Paste the data you copied from Excel (the list of tags) into the text field using Ctrl + V (Windows) or Cmd + V (Mac).
    • Make sure to paste only the words, do not include the column headers (‘tag’).
    • Then check the “CSV format” checkbox and confirm the import.

  12. Click on Import Words to load the data you pasted.

  13. The word art may generate automatically. (If it does not appear right away, click the red Generate button to create the word cloud using your imported words.)

  14. To make sure each word only appears once:
    • Go to the Words tab.
    • Click the Columns button (near the top of the word list).
    • Make sure the Repeat column is checked so it becomes visible.
    • In the word list, review the Repeat column and uncheck the box next to each word.
    • This ensures that every word appears only once in your design.

  15. Click Generate again to refresh the word art with the updated settings.

  16. To customize the appearance, use the left sidebar:
    • Click on Fonts and select the font style you prefer.
  17. Click Generate once more to apply your changes. (Tip: If you don’t like the layout or arrangement, simply click Generate again to try a different variation.)

Using Pivot tables to Visualize all coded text (not just tag/code names) This will create a Word Cloud from Full Coded Content

  1. Return to Excel file and select the Content column (usually cell D1).

  2. Select any cell inside the table, then go to the Insert tab in Excel and choose Pivot Table.
    Export this view

  3. In the Create PivotTable dialog box, keep the default settings and click OK to create a new pivot table.

  4. In the PivotTable Fields panel on the right:
    • Check the box next to Content to add it to the pivot table.
    • Then drag Content into the Rows area so that all coded passages appear in the table.

  5. Click inside the list of content displayed in the pivot table, then select all of the text. Copy the selected text using Edit > Copy (or Ctrl + C (Windows) / Cmd + C (Mac)).

  6. Open the Word Art website in a new tab and create a new word art project. Follow Steps 7–14 from the previous section to start a new design and import text.

  7. Customize the Word Art Design. To change shape of your word cloud:
    • In the left sidebar, click on Shapes.
    • Select the shape you would like to use.
    • Click the Generate button to apply the new shape and refresh the design. Export this view
  8. Download and save your Word Art. When you are happy with the design, go to the blue menu bar at the top of the Word Art window and click Download. Export this view
    • From the dropdown menu, choose Standard PNG as the file format.
    • Save the file with a clear name (for example: Taguette_WordArt_YourName.png) to your computer.

You should now have some visualizations that will hopefully be useful to include with the qualitative data that you have created in Taguette. Great job!

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