[Qgis-user] Exporting, processing and re-importing

[Magnus MacHale-Gunnarsson]

Hello.

(I’m not at all certain this is the right forum for this question, so apologies if it isn’t and please point me to a better forum.)

I’m using QGIS 3.26.6 Buenos Aires on MacOS Ventura 13.0.

I have a layer with lots of shapes, and I need to add a field or two, to some of the objects. I could do that in QGIS, but the interface is awkward if you have a few hundred objects to go through, so I’d like to export the data, group and filter as I like, and then re-import the processed file into QGIS.

1. Can I export just the attributes table, do the processing, and reimport? If so, how  do I connect the reimported attributes to the objects? Will the reimported attributes table clash with the existing one?

2. Or is it better to export the attributes WITH the coordinates? Which format is suitable for that? (I find row-based formats like csv or Excel easiest, but that is not too important.) I tried exporting to Excel, with ’Geometry’ checked, but when I tried to re-import that file again the coordinates were not included. 

3. I understand there is a relational database in the background. I’m very used to SQL. Is it better to work directly with that database, and not worry about importing and exporting? How do I access it?

  MagnusMG