How to Prepare your Data for Upload

Video on Preparing your data for upload and common errors with datasets when uploading

Intro: 

This video will show you how to prepare and format your data prior to upload to eSpatial. 
In this video, I will discuss the key steps to follow when preparing your data and common issues that arise when uploading data, such as: 

• Filters 
• Subtotals 
• Cell lengths 

• Hyperlinks

There are 5 steps you should follow when preparing your data for upload:  

• Format  
• First Sheet  
• Column Headers  
• Location data 
• Data Types 

Format:  

• Before uploading your data to eSpatial, you should ensure it is in the correct format.  eSpatial accepts uploads from an Excel or CSV file. To ensure you have selected the correct format when saving, click on the file drop down menu when saving, select save as and chose Excel or CSV (Comma delimited). 

First Sheet: 

• eSpatial only recognizes the data records that are in the first sheet of your spreadsheet. To ensure all your chosen data is uploaded you should make sure it is present within the first sheet.  

Column Headers: 

• Ensure your column headers are in the first row as eSpatial will recognize your first row as the header row. 

• You should note that if the first row/s in your dataset are blank then an error will occur when uploading your spreadsheet. 

Location Data: 

Address: 

• In order for your data to plot on a map it needs to contain address information. Please make sure your file contains location data. This can be in a single column as the full address or it can be split into parts e.g. Street, City, ZIP, State and Country.  
• If your data contains information for multiple countries, we recommend including a country column. 
• We suggest including as much address information as possible for your pins to plot more accurately. However, we recommend that you do NOT include address information such as Business/Building names, Apartment numbers or P.O. Boxes. 
• If you have secondary address information, such billing or shipping addresses as part of your dataset please ensure it is not used to locate your pins when uploading to eSpatial. 

Latitude/Longitude Coordinates: 

• Ensure that your latitude and longitude coordinates are in two separate columns. 
• Your coordinate data should also be in decimal format.

Data Types: 

• Users should ensure each column only contains one datatype. For example, text, Boolean, integer, date or decimal. This ensures that eSpatial correctly identifies your data allowing you to preform detailed analysis and filtering.  
• We suggest checking that product/user ID’s that are digits be formatted as text type column.

Common Data Issues: 

You should also note the following when preparing your data: 

Filters: 

• eSpatial does not recognize dataset filters in your spreadsheets, so if you only need to import specific data we recommend copying this data to its own spreadsheet so that it does not require filters. 

Data Subtotals: 

• You should remove any subtotals in your data. Even if there is no address associated with these values, they can sometimes still populate on your map and skew your analysis results.  

• Data should be a solid block with no blank rows or columns. 

Cell Character Length: 

• eSpatial cells have a max character length of 1500 characters. If you are importing report exports please ensure that none of your columns and cells exceed this limit or errors can occur on upload. 

Hyperlinks: 

• Website links can be included in your datasets which will bring you to the referenced site. However, hyperlinks where a single word is present and the website is linked within are not recognized so please ensure to revert them to their original URL if you want to link to sites. 

Finish  

Thank you for watching our how-to video. If you have any questions you can contact us by emailing help@espatial.com or by selecting the chat button to the bottom left-hand corner of your screen when on our website or logged into eSpatial.