Opening and Saving Metadata Files¶

Opening Metadata Files in Microsoft Excel¶

Given below are the instructions to ensure your metadata template document is formatted
and opened correctly in Microsoft Excel.

1. Open Microsoft Excel.
2. Click on File >> Open, then navigate to the folder in your computer that has the saved document template.
3. Select the document template file (with .tsv extension)
4. Choose the file type as "Delimited" and click Next.
5. Check the box next to Tab Delimiter and click Next.
6. IMPORTANT STEP: Select the radio button next to Text under Column data format and click Finish.

Saving Metadata Files¶

Microsoft Excel in Windows¶

Select "Save As" from the menubar.
Navigate to the folder where you would like to save your metadata document.
Provide a file name for your document. Remember, file names end with .metadata.tsv.
Select the option "Text (Tab delimited)" from the pull down menu for "Save as type" and press OK.

Microsoft Excel in Mac¶

To save your metadata documents as a properly formatted tab-separated value file, click "Save" and
select the option to save as "Windows Formatted Text".
This option saves the file as a tab-separated value file without any special characters.

LibreOffice Calc¶

Select "Save As", choose "All Format", and then choose "Test CSV (.csv)".
You will see a dialog box titled "Export Text File".
Select {Tab} from the pull down menu for "Field delimiter" and select OK.

Your document will be saved as a tab-delimited text file.

Sanity Check the TSV file¶

To ensure there are no special characters in your metadata document after following the above mentioned
methods to save your file, open the document in any text editor like

• Notepad (Windows),
• gedit (Ubuntu/Linux),
• TextEdit (Mac) or
• command line editors like vim, nano, etc. in the Terminal (Linux/Unix/Mac OSX).

Check if the document is properly formatted, i.e. columns are separated by a tab character and
the document does not have any characters like ^M, etc.