File > Open File...Using the Open Dataset Wizard

Clicking on File > Open file brings up then Open Dataset wizard, which looks much like a Windows file browse dialog:

Note: Until you decide to un-link the files, Omniscope will remember the location of the source file you are importing from, and will check to see if the data in this file has changed every time the Omniscope file is opened. The dat file is known as a linked source. You can break and re-establish the links between Omniscope and its source data file at any time.

Most source files in Excel .XLS, .CSV, .TSV and other common de-limited text data file formats will open directly in Omniscope. If you have problems, such as all the values appearing in one column, you may need to change the delimiter or rename a tab-delimited file extension from .TXT to .TSV (see below). If only some columns have not separated cleanly, you can use the Expand or Collapse Values functions in the Table View Tools menu to separate data into more columns or combine data into fewer columns. For more information, see the section on Data Layout.

If the source data file you want to open is not on your machine, or local network, you can use the Open from Web button to specify the exact location (URL) of the data file you wish to import:

Customise Data Import

If you are repeatedly using/importing other peoples' spreadsheets, you can depart from the recommended simple spreadsheet layout somewhat by ticking the Customise data import behaviour option and providing Omniscope with additional information about the layout of the data you are importing. For example, sometimes you may have a CSV, TSV or Excel file which does not have the column headers on the first row. Without customisation, Omniscope will assume the first row contains headers, and include the actual column headers as the first row of data. To skip any number of redundant rows on file import, use the Skip first ?? rows box to enter the number of redundant rows in your data file before the header.

International data issues

Data File delimiters-.CSV stands for "Comma Separated Values", which means the cells in each row of the data table are separated by the comma character. However, if you are in a region that also uses comma for the decimal point (e.g. several European countries, such as France), some versions of Excel create .CSV files that use a semicolon as the separator character. Sometimes these files are saved with a .TXT extension, even though they are multi-column tables.

Omniscope is unable to detect this situation automatically. If you open such a file in Omniscope, your data will very clearly be wrong, with most columns appearing as text with semicolons. To iport this kind of file, use the Customise data import option dialog to change the Separator character  to a semicolon " ; ".

Dates & Numbers-  If you are running on Windows, when importing data that is in a delimited  text format which includes Excel, CSV and TSV (tab-separated values), Omniscope will use your Windows Regional Settings to try to automatically recognise data. For example, for a PC with United States Regional Settings, Omniscope will recognise "5/13/2005" as a date and "1,500.5" as a number. For some international users, however, this may not work as expected and the result will be an import of all columns as type Text (shown either as multi-coloured Category columns or white Text columns in Omniscope). If this occurs, you can usually manually convert numbers and dates & times fields using the Edit > Manage fields dialog. for more information on formatting dates & times, and dealing with time zone issues, see the section on Dates & Times.

If you know your data has been formatted for a different region, change the Locale drop-down accordingly. For example, if you live in Germany but have received a .CSV from an American customer, you should choose "English (US)". If you find Omniscope gets things wrong and your data is incorrectly recognised, you can disable auto-detection of dates and numbers by deselecting the two Recognise checkboxes. All fields will open as Category or Text data and their text values will be preserved. More on dealing with International data issues

Importing XML files

Importing .XML files which have already been transformed to Visokio XML Schema is the same as opening a .CSV. If your .XML file conforms to another schema, then you must prepare an .XSL Transform file, tick Customise data import and specify that file to transform the non-Visokio XML file to Visokio XML Schema for import. Your .XSL Transform stylesheet can be accessed from any location, including the web.

Back to File Commands