Importing multiple animals from a file

Introduction :

Instead of creating the animals one by one, it is possible to create several animals at the same time by importing all the data concerning them from a file created with spreadsheet software (Microsoft Excel, Open Office or other).

Import animals:

To import multiple animals from a file, you can:

Open the "Experiment" view and click on the button in the description of the experiment.

Open the "Experiment" view and click on the command ribbon button.

Open the "List of animals" view and click on the command ribbon button.

Open the "Animal List" view, right-click on the animal list table to bring up the context menu, then use the "Import Animals from File" menu

File format and syntax:

Ethotrack can import the list of animals from the following formats:

Microsoft Excel files, *.xlsx format (since Excel 2007) or *.xls format (Excel 97 - 2003).

*.cvs text files with semicolon as separator.

*.txt text file with tab character as separator.

The file must respect the following rules:

1/ the first line must include the column headers as in the animal list table. The keywords for the column headers are:

•"nom" or "name": the name of the animal.

•"notes" or "note": free text (if the file is in text format (csv or txt) the "notes" field must not include the separator character.

•"protocol" or "protocol": the name of the animal's default protocol. This protocol must exist and must be created before importing.

•"arèna" or "arene" or "arena": the default arena ( Only if the experiment has a single protocol, otherwise you need to use the protocol name as header ).

•"Protocol name" : the default arena.

•"Animals" category user fields. The fields must exist and must be created before importing. Possible values for choice type fields must also be created before importing.

Checking the header of columns or choice type values does not take into account upper and lower case letters (the name column can also be called Name or NAME).

2/ the following lines must contain the animal data with one line per animal. Blank lines are ignored.

3/ If a user field is of the "numeric value" type, the decimal separator can be a period or a comma, with no thousands separator.

If an animal already exists in the experiment, Ethotrack checks the data of the existing animal and possibly modifies the values which must be.

Sample file:

Name, Protocol, Arena, Gender, Treatment

001,Protocol 1,Arena NW,Male,None

002,Protocol 1,Arena NE,Female,Treatment A

003,Protocol 1,Arena SW,Female,Treatment B