Exporting from LabArchives

Why an offline ZIP

LabArchives is your ELN of record while you're running experiments. ResearchOS doesn't talk to LabArchives in real time, and it doesn't write anything back to your LabArchives account. The hand-off in between is a single file, the Offline Notebook ZIP, that LabArchives generates on demand and emails you when it's ready.

Once you have that ZIP downloaded, the ResearchOS importer reads it directly. You don't unzip it, and you don't need ResearchOS to be signed in to LabArchives. The next page over, Import from LabArchives, covers what the importer does with the file.

Generate the offline ZIP

1. Sign in to LabArchives at mynotebook.labarchives.com (or your institution's LabArchives URL) in a normal browser tab.
2. Open the notebook you want to bring into ResearchOS from the notebook switcher in the top-left. Export is one notebook at a time, so if you want several notebooks in ResearchOS, plan to repeat this flow for each.
3. Open the ≡ Tools menu in the top toolbar and pick Utilities → Create Offline Notebook. (Older builds park this under More → Offline Notebook or Notebook Settings → Export. You're after the same item either way.)
4. Confirm the request when LabArchives prompts. The request goes into a queue, and LabArchives builds the ZIP server-side. You can close the tab while it works.
5. Wait for the email. LabArchives mails you a link as soon as the ZIP is ready. Small notebooks take a minute or two, large ones with many attachments can take much longer.
6. Click the link in the email and download the ZIP to your computer. The file is usually named something like offline_<notebook-id>.zip. Save it somewhere you can find later (your Downloads folder is fine), and don't unzip it. ResearchOS reads the archive as a single file.

What's inside the ZIP

You don't need to open the ZIP yourself, but it helps to know what's in there.

• One HTML file per notebook page, holding the page title, every entry on that page, and the entry text.
• A subdirectory of attachments for each page, where image uploads and other bundled files sit alongside the HTML.
• A top-level manifest that describes the notebook tree, the export timestamp, and who triggered the export.

Some inline images live in LabArchives' cloud as URLs rather than bundled bytes. The Offline Notebook ZIP keeps the URL but not the image itself for those. ResearchOS handles that on import through a separate Fetch images step, which the import page covers.

Up next

With the ZIP downloaded, head to Import from LabArchives to walk through the ResearchOS-side wizard. You'll pick the format, drop the ZIP, preview what's inside, map folders to projects, and apply.