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OpenRefine

An introduction to this free, open source tool for working with "messy" data.

Common Transformations

Trimming leading and trailing whitespace:

Trimming leading and trailing whitespace is incredibly important when it comes to the eventual analysis of your data. Oftentimes, especially with human-input data, there are invisible blank spaces existing within your data. These blank spaces are called whitespace and can drastically impact your analysis. Whitespace can occur either before (leading) or after (trailing) a statement. To correct this, you must go column by column and select the dropdown arrow next to the heading. 

Select "edit cells" > "common transforms" > "trim leading and trailing whitespace".

 

Changing case:

To alter the case of your text select the dropdown arrow next to the column heading.

Select "edit cells" > "common transforms" > "to uppercase" OR "to lowercase".

 

Changing data type:

To alter the data type of a column select the dropdown arrow next to the column heading.

Select "edit cells" > "common transforms" > "to date" OR "to number", etc.