How to…

Import from Excel

Bring in the sheet your lab already keeps, as it is, with no template and no renaming of columns.

1. For mice, make your racks first: Cages → Rack grid → New rack, named as in your sheet.A sheet with Rack and Position columns then puts every cage in its place; anything without a position waits in Unplaced.
2. Open the database and press Import from Excel in the toolbar above its sheet (for mice, on the Mice tab).
3. Choose a file (.xlsx, CSV or TSV, up to 15 MB and 5,000 rows) and press Continue.If the workbook has several sheets, pick one above the matches.
4. Check where each column goes. Each match says why; change any of them.A column BioManager doesn't have becomes a new column in an inventory or organism database (if you may configure it), or goes Into the notes; Leave out skips it.
5. Give a value for any must-have column your sheet lacks, like the owner: it goes on every row.For plasmids and stock, also whether every row is Personal or Lab common.
6. Press Preview the import. It runs every row through the database's own checks and lists any that would be skipped, by its row number in Excel.Change the matches goes back a step.
7. Press the import button, which counts the records (Import 120 mice, say).

The rows are saved as one batch, which More → Batch history can undo. Dates stay as Excel wrote them, and one that can't be read, or a birth date in the future, is left blank and kept in the notes. A mouse whose ID is already taken gets the next free one, with yours kept in its notes.

Related: Bring your lab in Coming from Excel Undo and history