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CENTER FOR ANALYTICS SERVICES

  • ‘INTRO TO EXCEL
  • DATA AND STATISTICS
  • PREPARING DATA
  • INTRO GOOGLE SHEET
  • CHARTS AND VISUALISATION
  • UNDERSTANDING DATA TYPES

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INTRO TO EXCEL, GOOGLE SHEET AND DATA PREPARATION

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Overview

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In this module, we focus on developing essential data and spreadsheet skills in Google Sheets.

Before we can start our exploration of data, we will need to do the following:

The tool we will be using in Preparing data:

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Log into our existing Google account.

Create a new Google account.

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Access the data for the specific walk-throughs and learning activities.

Download and access all data for Preparing data.

OR

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Google account

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Logging into an existing Google account:

In order to use Google Sheets, we will need to have a Google account since our spreadsheets will be created and edited in the Google Drive linked to this account.

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  • Open a web browser (we recommend using Chrome).
  • Navigate to Google https://www.google.com/
  • Click on Sign in.
  • Add your email address or phone number.
  • Enter your password.
  • If you have 2-factor authentication set up, follow the instructions to log in.
  • You’ll be redirected to the main Google search interface upon successful login.

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Google account

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Creating a new free Google account:

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  • Follow steps 01. to 03. on logging into an existing Google account.
  • Click on Create account.
  • Follow the prompts to create a new account.

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Accessing the data

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There are multiple ways to access the data we need for this module, but all of the methods will require you to add the CSV and XLSX files to our Google Drive.

Accessing a ZIP, CSV, or XLSX (spreadsheet) file for a specific walk-through:

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  • On Athena, navigate to our piece of learning material that includes [Walk-through] in the title.
  • Within the first few seconds of playing the video, a pop-up will appear in the top-right corner of the video frame.

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Accessing the data

Module overview: Preparing data

  • Clicking on the pop-up will open the file in a new tab.
  • We can open the file in Google Sheets by clicking on the recommended action button Open with Google Sheets.�Note: This action will automatically create a new spreadsheet file in our Google Drive.
  • We can also download the file to our local machine by clicking on the download icon. The file will be stored in our Downloads folder on our local machine.

Downloading or opening CSV files:

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Accessing the data

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  • Clicking on the pop-up will open the spreadsheet file in Google Sheets in a new tab.
  • We only have View-only access to this file.
  • We can make a copy of the file and save it on our Google Drive.
  • We can download the spreadsheet file to our local machine as a XLSX, CSV, etc.

Downloading or opening XLSX (spreadsheet) files:

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Accessing the data

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  • We navigate to this train, Getting set up for Preparing data [Slides].
  • Next to the description of this train on Athena, we can click on the Download Additional Files button to download the module’s required datasets and spreadsheets.
  • We find the ZIP archive in the Downloads folder of our local machine. Double-click or right-click to unzip the archive.

Downloading the entire module’s datasets and spreadsheets as a ZIP archive:

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Navigating Google Drive

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Google Drive is a cloud-based file storage service that allows us to store, access, and manage files in real-time. Our Google Sheet files are saved on Drive, which means any updates we make automatically get synced and saved in the cloud.

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  • Open a web browser (we recommend using Chrome).
  • Navigate to Google Drive https://drive.google.com/
  • If we copied a spreadsheet file in order to access a specific walk-through dataset, we should see it somewhere in our Drive, depending on where we copied the file to.
  • We can also use the search bar to find a specific file.

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Navigating Google Drive

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  • Clicking on + New in the left panel of Google Drive, we select Folder upload.
  • Our local computer file system will open in a window. We can navigate to the unzipped folder we downloaded earlier and select upload.
  • We will see a pop-up in the bottom-right corner that provides the status of the upload.

Uploading and accessing the entire module’s datasets and spreadsheet files:

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