I would use phpmyadmin which usually comes with most server hosting options. E.g., via cPanel.

This will allow you to export table data in a variety of formats like csv, xml, json etc.,

not sure what you mean by file users>member information???   not really a file, but perhaps db…

do you want users information?  wp or sp or both?

the three db tables you are probably interested in our wp_users, wp_usermeta and wp_sfmembers…  and use phpmyadmin like Andy says…  if you just want wp, there are plugins for that but it wont grab the sp member add on info…

thank you both.

Shout if you need advice about which data items are in which table…

Thanks Yellow. Sadly I am not a tecchie so have no idea where to start. I have already posted about this before as I think anyone running a forum (for a commercial purpose) wants/needs to be able to extract data easily in order to analyze participation figures etc…I understand that all this info is buried somewhere in the database but am at a loss as to how to get it out in a format that make sense to me and I can work with. I understand I can do it from myPHPadmin but it’s all new to me. Will have to sit down and study…

Well – the first task -I would recommend – is to identify (a) the data items you want to export and (b) in what format you want the data. The ‘how’ really has to follow on from that…