File
The File source lets you import data from a local file.
Options
File selection
The file selection section allows you to choose what file you want to import. Click on the "Browse" button to select a file.
Omniscope supports the following file types:
- Visokio Omniscope file formats (IOK, IOM, IMF).
- Comma Separated Values (CSV).
- Tab Separated Values (TSV).
- Plain text files (TXT).
- Excel workbooks (XLS, XLSX).
- Outlook (PST).
- Quattro Pro Spreadseet (QPW).
- Web access logs (LOG).
- XML data files (XML).
After you have selected a file the options for configuring how you want to import the file will be displayed. These options vary depending on the type of file you have selected.
Omniscope file options
The following options are available when you select a Visokio Omniscope file type (IOK, IOM, IMF):
- File password. Enter the password used to open the file. Leave blank if the file has no password.
- Fields. Select which fields you want to import.
- Formula recalculation. If the selected file has formulas fields this option determines how the data in these fields is recalculated. Select "None" to disable formula recalculation altogether. Select "Formulas that change over time" to only recalculate formulas with values that can change depending on when the formula was calculated. Select "All" to recalculate all formula values.
- Data refresh. If the selected file was obtained from an external data source this option determines whether the data is refreshed. Select "Disabled" to disable data refresh altogether. Select "Automatic (if detectable)" to refresh only if the data source has changed. Select "Forced refresh" to refresh whenever the data is imported.
Text based file options
The following options are available when you select a text based file type (CSV, TSV or TXT):
- Type. Allows you to select the structure of the data inside the file. Select "Text, delimited" if each field in the data is delimited by a specific cell separator character. For CSV files the default separator is the "," character and for TSV files the default separator is the TAB character. Select "Text, fixed width" if each column of the data is specified a set number of characters. If you have a data in a text file where the first column has exactly 10 characters, and the second column has exactly 8 characters and so on, then you should select this option. Select "Text, XML" if the data inside the file is XML. Not all XML files use the "XML" file extension.
- Select table data. Click this button to identify the header rows, data rows and columns inside the selected file. For more information see the Table data selection help page. PENDING.
- Has header. Select this option if the file has one or more header rows.
- Header rows. Enter the first and last header rows.
- Data rows. Enter the first and last data rows. Leave the last row blank if you want to read all rows.
- Skip empty data rows. Select this option if you want to skip all data rows with no data.
- Auto-recognise. This option allows you to configure whether Omniscope will attempt to recognise numbers and dates. Leave these options unchecked to import the data as text.
- Auto-convert to empty. If this option is selected the following will be converted to empty values (nulls): "null", "None given", "Unknown", "Not known", "N/A".
- Cell separator. "Text, delimited" type only. Enter the field separator character.
- Cell quote character. "Text, delimited" type only. PENDING.
- Encoding. Select the encoding of the file. If you see any unusual characters in the data you can try changing this to UTF-8 or another encoding.
- Locale. PENDING.
- Missing field prefix. Enter the field name prefix used when a missing field is encountered. If your data contains 3 missing field names and you select the prefix "Field" the missing fields will be named "Field 1","Field 2" and "Field 3".
- Break points. "Text, fixed width" type only. Click this button to select the break points in the data. The breakpoints define the number of number of characters in each column. For more information see the Set break points help page. PENDING
Excel file options.
The following options are available when you select an Excel file type (XLS, XLSX).
- Password. Enter the password used to open the file. Leave blank if the file has no password.
- Import. Select "Single worksheet" to import one worksheet only. You can choose which worksheet you want to import from the dropdown below. Select "Appended worksheets" to select one or more worksheets to append into a single data-set. You can choose which worksheets you want to append in the dropdown below.
- Reader. This option allows you to select how you want Omniscope to read the Excel data. Your choice should depend on whether you have Excel installed, how much data you are trying to read and the content of the data. If you are experiencing problems with one reader you can try switching to a different reader. The "Excel as CSV" reader will open the file in Excel and the force Excel to save the data as a CSV file before importing it into Omniscope. This reader is normally the best method for reading the data as it uses Excel to interpret any formulas inside the workbook. You must have Excel installed to use this reader. If this option is selected and you don't have Excel installed the "Omniscope" reader will be used instead. The "Excel direct" reader will open the file in Excel and then communicate directly with Excel to obtain the data. You must have Excel installed to use this reader. If this option is selected and you don't have Excel installed the "Omniscope" reader will be used instead. The "Omniscope" reader is the only reader that can be used if Excel is not installed. It uses Omniscope to decode the file format. This reader requires more memory and may not work with certain formulas.
- Table data, Has header, Header rows, Data rows, Skip empty data rows, Auto recognise, Auto convert to empty. For more information on these options please refer to the documentation in the Text based file options section of this page.
