All new protocols created from 25 April 2023 have study centric data management enabled.

See Should I use study centric data management in my review?

Prepare your files for import

Before importing, make sure you have structured your data according to the recommended Data extraction templates.

The templates are in CSV format. A Comma Separated Values (CSV) file is a plain text file that stores data by delimiting data entries with commas, in an Excel sheet.

Upload reference data before study data

If you want to import the bibliographic references data for included studies, upload the RIS file before importing the CSVs. This needs to be done before you import the CSVs into RevMan. If you import them afterwards then you’ll get duplicate studies in RevMan.

Prepare the study information file

Add one row per study, includes general study information, study characteristics and covariates.

Green box needs to match study IDs across all the import files
Red boxes need to match the Covariates within the Review criteria section of RevMan (both covariate name and categories) - you don't have to include the covariates to the import as you can add them manually to the studies after the import (some authors find this easier as covariate names and categories must match exactly for the import to work)

Covariate names and categories in the CSV must match exactly with those added into RevMan otherwise you’ll get errors when you try to import the CSV.

Prepare the study arm information file

Add one row per arm for each study, includes the arms the studies report to and which intervention they map to.

Green box needs to match study IDs across all the import files
Purple box needs to match Interventions within the Review criteria section of RevMan

Intervention and intervention groupings names in the CSV must match exactly with those added into RevMan otherwise you’ll get errors when you try to import the CSV.

Prepare the study results import file

Add one row per arm for each study, includes contrast and arm level result data including calculator input fields. If you’ve added multiple time points for an outcome these need to be added into RevMan as separate outcomes (do not delete columns as it can affect the import).

We advise one study results sheet per outcome to keep files manageable or one study results sheet for dichotomous outcomes and one for continuous outcomes. As files become large, hiding rows and columns not in use may be helpful.

Outcome names in the CSV must match exactly with those added into RevMan otherwise you’ll get errors when you try to import the CSV.

You might want to tidy up the outcome names at this point to ensure the same outcomes across studies have the same spellings and align to the outcomes you will be creating analysis for in RevMan.

Below is an example of a completed study result import file, which includes arm and contrast level data for a dichotomous outcome. For information on the difference between arm and contrast data see ‘Types of study results data’.

Green box needs to match study IDs across all the import files
Blue box needs to match Outcomes within the Review criteria section of RevMan
Purple box needs to match Interventions within the Review criteria section of RevMan

Prepare the Risk of Bias files

Add one row per study.

Note: A review can only use either Risk of Bias 1 OR Risk of Bias 2 (not a combination of both).

Below are examples of completed Risk of Bias import files for Risk of Bias 1 and Risk of Bias 2.

Risk of Bias 1:

Green box needs to match study IDs across all the import files
Blue boxes with Risk of Bias domains need to match Risk of Bias setup within the Review criteria section of RevMan

Risk of Bias 2:

Green box needs to match study IDs across all the import files
Blue box needs to match Outcomes within the Review criteria section of RevMan
Black box needs to match the effect measure in the Study results import sheet

Import study data

The import allows you to:

Create new studies with their data
Update existing studies (if you import new data it overrides the previous versions in RevMan)
Import one or more types of data at the same time

Before importing, you will need to remove the yellow explainer row and save each data sheet separately as CSV UTF-8 (in Excel you can pick CSV UTF-8 option when you save). Note that you should only have your own data, so make sure you have also removed the example data from the file. See the screenshot below for the correct settings when saving in Excel.

Excel may use the country setting on your computer to inform how to separate values when saving a CSV file (yes, it's correct, comma separated values can be separated by other delimiters!). If this is the case, you can get help from this article for PC and from this article from MAC to make sure your values are separated by commas when you save as CSV.

On the Dashboard in the Action panel, click 'Import study data'.

Select Import from template and upload files for each type of data you wish to import. You can import one or more types of data at the same time. RevMan will notify you if the format of the data is incorrect or inconsistent between files. If you get errors, you will need to resolve these before you can continue to import.

Assuming you have no import validation errors, you can click 'Import study data'.

Confirm import and then RevMan will import your study data and report on which studies were created and/or updated. A version will be tagged in the history before import so you can revert if there's a need for it.

Common errors with data import files

Error	Tips
Import error as the following in the files do not match exactly with what’s setup in RevMan or used across the different import files: Study ID Covariate names and category values Intervention arms Intervention groupings Outcomes Risk of Bias domains Effect measure for a specific outcome for a study	When you are preparing your data extraction sheet, it can be useful to set up the Review criteria in RevMan at the same time as these will need to match exactly with the data in your files. You can also set up the synthesis PICOs in advance and then your analyses will be populated when you import your data. Before you import study data, the Review criteria will need to have the Interventions, Outcomes and Covariates set up, and they need to match exactly with the data in your files. The data also needs to be in the format provided in the templates for RevMan to be able to import.
Import error as the import files are in the incorrect format.	Before importing, you will need to remove the yellow explainer row and save each data sheet separately as CSV UTF-8. Note that you should only have your own data, so make sure you have also removed the example data from the file. See the screenshot below for the correct settings when saving in Excel.
Import error as the import files because of how values are separated in the files.	Excel may use the country setting on your computer to inform how to separate values when saving a CSV file (for example, comma separated values can be separated by other delimiters). If this is the case, you can get help from this article for PC and from this article from MAC to make sure your values are separated by commas when you save as CSV.
Import error when I import my Risk of Bias 2 data.	Risk of Bias 2 data need to be imported together with the result sheet.
When I imported my data I lost the formatting, such as bold and italics.	At the moment you will not be able to import formatting such as bold and italics for any of the data.