Spreadsheet View allows you to browse through the entire dataset as a table, allowing you to see what columns you have in your dataset and what values those columns contain. Here, you can easily view data, configure data, and export data.

To access Spreadsheet View in Virtualitics Explore, click on the Spreadsheet icon in the top left toolbar.

Viewing Data

• Viewing Rows

  • By default, Virtualitics Explore displays all rows of the currently active dataset in Spreadsheet View.

  • However, if you have hidden points in your current plot (for example, after applying a filter), you may want to examine only the visible points. In this case, click the drop-down under Rows Shown at the top of Spreadsheet View to choose between All Rows, Visible Rows, or Hidden Rows.
    
    

• Data Types

  • Virtualitics Explore categorizes your columns into types when you first load in a dataset. We call these categorized columns Features. 

    Note: A feature’s type determines which dimensions can visualize the feature, how data analytics tools interact with the feature, and how certain plot types display the feature.

    The available feature types and their icon representations are:

    Numerical		Contain a variety of unique numerical values
    Categorical		Contain a set of categories that are shared by multiple rows. Unique string identifiers are also represented as categorical. When plotting categorical features, up to 100 categories will be shown on the axis tick-marks. Can also include a numerical categorical, which is useful when numbers are included in a dataset but those numbers do not lend themselves to numerical analysis, such as unique person IDs or identifiers.
    Date		Contain only measurements of time. The cells must match an Accepted Date Format.
    URL		Contain only web links or links to the local file system. These links can be selected through the Point Info panel after selecting individual points in a visualization.

• Viewing Data in a One-Dimensional (1D) Histogram

  • The auto-generated 1D histogram located under the header in each column allows you to see the distribution of data in each column. Clicking the 1D histogram will bring up a detailed view of that data.
    
    

• Switching Between Loaded Datasets

  • To toggle between loaded datasets in the web application, click the Main Menu icon, click Loaded Datasets, and select the file you wish to load.

    or

  • Locate and click on the file in the center of the top toolbar. This will open a dropdown where you can toggle between the loaded datasets.

Configuring Data

A few important pieces of maintenance may need to be performed for newly loaded datasets:

• Feature Creation: Right-click on a column title to see the options available to create new features based on that column in Spreadsheet View.

• Renaming Columns: Right-click on the column title, and then select Rename to change the name of the column.

• Pivoting: You can pivot any Categorical features by right clicking the column title, selecting Pivot, and then choosing how to pivot your data. This will create a new dataset with your pivoted data.

• Basic Data Cleansing: Virtualitics Explore recognizes empty cells as “Missing” and will handle them differently when doing calculations and visualizing those columns. However, some datasets define missing values in a different way, such as with the words “missing” or “N/A”. To have Virtualitics Explore recognize these as missing values, use the Find and Replace tool. 

Exporting Data

You can export your active dataset to preserve any modifications you’ve made to the dataset for future analysis. Simply click on the Export Dataset dropdown menu at the top of Spreadsheet View and choose your desired file format.

Video Tutorial