Excel exports and mass editing

Last modified by akuusija@helsinki_fi on 2024/02/07 06:51

Page in Finnish: Excel-raportit ja massamuokkaukset

Mass editing specimens

Sometimes you might want to make similar modifications to several (even hundreds) of specimens, for example to fix a systematic digitization error. It would be impractical to do these one by one using the web form. Instead, this kind of mass edits can be done with the help of Excel like so:

  1. Use the search form to find the appropriate data from Kotka.
  2. Export the data into Excel file using the Kotka specific format (export limit currently max 10 000 rows).
  3. Edit and save (remember to save the file!) the data in Excel. (Remove those rows that you don’t wish to edit but always keep all columns even if you don't edit their contents)
  4. Import the Excel file back into Kotka. See more about import.

Kotka will check whether the same specimens have been edited in Kotka by someone while you edited them in Excel. If this is the case, you can't import the Excel at all (a file that contains even one specimen that has been edited in Kotka meanwhile). You can either:

  1. make your edits using the entry form for those specimens that had been modified in Kotka, and import from Excel only those rows that had not been edited in Kotka
  2. or re-export them into Excel and make your edits there and try the import again.

For this reason, it’s wise to warn your colleagues (those who are managing the same data) before making the mass edits, and import the Excel back into Kotka as soon as the edits are done.

Be careful when you are making mass edits: it is easy to make unintentional modifications with Excel when copying and dragging data. Kotka backs up old versions of the data, but large mistakes are nevertheless arduous to fix.

Let the automatically generated column called MZDateEdited be as it appears on the exported file, do not make changes to it. Kotka uses that column to determine whether the specimens were edited in Kotka between the export and import.


See Excel templates and import for more information on using the Excel file and importing data.