2.6.5. Using an External CV

A created or imported controlled vocabulary is part of the current transcription and is therefore part of the .eaf file when the transcription is saved. However, there are situations in which a controlled vocabulary is shared between two or more transcriptions and change to that CV should be propagated to all transcription that use that CV. For this purpose, ELAN enables you to link to a controlled vocabulary that is either on your local or attached hard disk or somewhere on the network or the Internet:

  1. select Edit > Edit Controlled Vocabularies

  2. click External CV

  3. Do one of the following:

    • click on Browse... and browse to and select the file containing the External CV

    • enter a URL that point to an External CV somewhere on the Internet

  4. Click OK to make the link

Similar to the Import CV process, if you try to import a CV with the same name as an already existing CV a dialog will pop up asking what to do (see Figure 2.37).

The entries of an External CV cannot be edited nor their ISO Data Category. Also the order of the entries cannot be change. The possibility to add a color and shortcut key to an entry via the More Options... button is still there.