Importing Pleco Vocabulary Into Skritter

Pleco is one of the best and most popular apps for learning Chinese out there. Many students love looking up words in Pleco, but would like to study and learn them elsewhere, like on Skritter. In this guide, we’ll show you how to export words saved in Pleco, and import them into Skritter so you can study and test yourself on the reading, writing, tones, and definition using Skritter.

The basic steps involve exporting a text file and importing the file into Skritter. To bulk import vocab into Skritter, follow the steps here:

Creating and Managing Lists

Organize Bookmarks

• In the side menu of Pleco, tap on Organize Bookmarks and add a New category called “Skritter”. You can also create sub-categories inside this if you want to separate your word lists by month or category.
• Now that we’ve made a new category, you can search for a word you want to learn in Pleco. At the top of the dictionary entry, there is a + icon that you can tap to add to your category. Long hold on the + icon to first select the default folder.

Prepare File for Export

• Once you’ve saved up a collection of words you want to export, you can open the side menu again and choose Import/Export
• Click Export and then Step 1, Export Bookmarks
  • Tap on all bookmarks and choose bookmarks in categories which will unlock the Skritter folder.
  • Change the export file type from XML to TXT.
  • Turn off all included data options such as definitions.
  • Choose either simplified or traditional
  • Tap Begin Export
• Pick a Folder Location and Give it a title
• Go back to the Export page, and tap on Step 2 File Manager. (You can also access the file manager from the side root menu).
• Here you will see your new txt file.
  • If you have the Pleco paid add-on “Document Reader” you can view the txt file directly here. You may copy the entries and move to the next step.
  • Otherwise, you’ll need to tap on the i icon and Share/Open in to save the file to somewhere easily accessible like the Files app on your iPhone, or Google Drive. The next steps might be easier to complete on a computer. You can also email/ airdrop the txt file to yourself.

HelpScout Guides - Pleco Export by Skritter

Import the Text File into Skritter

• Locate the txt file from either your email, computer, or cloud drive.
• Pleco includes the pinyin in the exported txt file which is not necessary for Skritter’s bulk importer, so you can copy the text into a spreadsheet app like Excell, Apple Numbers or Google Drive.
• You could also use ChatGPT and ask it to “remove the pinyin, keeping only the characters”, and copy the results into Skritter.
• Copy/paste the contents of the txt file into a spreadsheet app should separate the characters and pinyin into two columns.
  • Delete the pinyin column and copy the character entries into Skritter.

Paste the contents into Skritter's Vocab Uploader

• Create a new deck on Skritter by navigating to “Lists”. Tap Create New List and give it a title like “Pleco Imports”. You may also upload some deck art during this step.
• Click Create list and paste the content into the deck. You may upload 200 items per section at a time. If you have a bigger list, you can create multiple sections. Follow this (video) guide for list creation.