How to export to CSV with scientific name first in Species column?

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mjdurham@charter.net
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2020 12:11 pm

How to export to CSV with scientific name first in Species column?

Post by mjdurham@charter.net » Thu Jun 04, 2020 1:28 pm

Hello,

I really value being able to export my ECO Trees data to a CSV file and manipulate it in Excel. Is there a way to control how the Species column is output when doing this? I would like the scientific name to be the first element with the common name in parentheses; currently it is the reverse of that. I could get a much more meaningful sort on Species if the scientific name were first. I have set the Report | Settings to "Scientific" but it doesn't seem to change the output.

Thank you,
Mary
Jason.Henning
i-Tree Team
Posts: 340
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 7:45 am

Re: How to export to CSV with scientific name first in Species column?

Post by Jason.Henning » Thu Jun 04, 2020 1:58 pm

Hi Mary,
Unfortunately the order of those things cannot be changed in the Export. It was easier for our programmers to hard code how the columns are displayed in the export then to make them change dynamically based on user preferences.
If you are using Microsoft Excel you could use the "Text to Columns" feature to create two columns from the combined species column. To do that you will need to:
  1. First insert an empty column to the right of your current species column.
  2. Go to the "Data" tab in Excel and select "Text to Columns".
  3. When the "Text to Columns" wizard opens select "Delimited", then click "Next"
  4. In step 2 of that wizard select "Other" and put the opening parentheses, "(" in the box next to "other." This will break that column into two columns wherever there is an opening parentheses.
  5. After that you can just click "Finish."
That should create two columns one with the common names and another with the scientific names. To clean things up you may want highlight your new scientific name column and click "ctrl"+h then replace all the closing parentheses, ")" with nothing to delete those left over parentheses from your scientific names.
Hope that helps.
Thanks,
Jason
A member of the i-Tree Team
mjdurham@charter.net
Posts: 4
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2020 12:11 pm

Re: How to export to CSV with scientific name first in Species column?

Post by mjdurham@charter.net » Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:27 am

Hi Jason,

Thanks for these instructions.

Is there any chance that this could change with a database update? OR at least switch so that Scientific Name is the first one with common name in parentheses? The problem I have with the current behavior is that common names are all over the place alphabetically, whereas Scientific Names will at least group together -- e.g. Acer species, Acer griseum, Acer rubrum -- which would be an enormous help in working with our data. Sometimes we have purchased trees not having variety information, other times we have it, and it's spread all over the alphabet with the common names leading, making it trickier for us volunteers to work with.

Thanks
Mary
Jason.Henning
i-Tree Team
Posts: 340
Joined: Fri Dec 21, 2012 7:45 am

Re: How to export to CSV with scientific name first in Species column?

Post by Jason.Henning » Mon Jun 08, 2020 12:13 pm

Hi Mary,
Unfortunately I don't think they will be making that change. Our most limiting resource is developer time. Even small changes like this tend to have a cascading effect that requires editing every report table that includes species names. Our management team is very cautious about limiting our developer involvement that type of project.
Hopefully, by breaking that one column into two columns you can sort by the new "scientific name" column to get what you need.
Thanks,
Jason
A member of the i-Tree Team
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