Setup

Data

The data for this lesson is part of the Introduction to Data Management practices workshop materials. It is a teaching dataset compiled for this workshop. It contains research data from the public domain as well as minor data created specifically for this workshop with inspiration from real data.

The samples_openrefine_lesson.csv used in this lesson is mimicking a spreadsheet file used by a research lab working with Covid-19 data, with samples taken from hospitalised and diagnosed patients.

Download
The following file:

Software

For this lesson you will need OpenRefine and a web browser.
Note: this is a Java program that runs on your machine (not in the cloud). It runs inside your browser, but no web connection is needed.

A text editor (like NotePad or TextEdit) is also required.

Windows

  • Check that you have Firefox or Chrome browsers installed and set as your default browser. OpenRefine runs in your default browser. It will not run correctly in Internet Explorer.
  • Download software from https://openrefine.org/download.html
  • Unzip the downloaded file into a directory by right-clicking and selecting “Extract…”. Name that directory something like OpenRefine.
  • Go to your newly created OpenRefine directory.
  • Launch OpenRefine
  • Click the openrefine.exe (this will launch a command prompt window, but you can ignore that and wait for the browser to launch)
  • If you are using a different browser, or OpenRefine does not automatically open for you, point your browser at http://127.0.0.1:3333/ or http://localhost:3333 to launch the program.
  • If you get a Java error when you try to open it you can try downloading OpenRefine 3.4 beta 2 Windows kit with embedded Java.

Mac

  • Check that you have Firefox or Chrome browsers installed and set as your default browser. OpenRefine runs in your default browser. It will not run correctly in Internet Explorer.
  • Download software from https://openrefine.org/download.html
  • Unzip the downloaded file into a directory by double-clicking it. Name that directory something like OpenRefine.
  • Go to your newly created OpenRefine directory.
  • Launch OpenRefine
  • Drag icon into Applications folder, and Ctrl-click/Open… it.
  • If you are using a different browser, or OpenRefine does not automatically open for you, point your browser at http://127.0.0.1:3333/ or http://localhost:3333 to launch the program.

Linux

  • Check that you have Firefox or Chrome browsers installed and set as your default browser. OpenRefine runs in your default browser. It will not run correctly in Internet Explorer.
  • Download software from https://openrefine.org/download.html
  • Unzip the downloaded file into a directory. Name that directory something like OpenRefine.
  • Go to your newly created OpenRefine directory.
  • Launch OpenRefine
  • Type ./refine into the terminal within the OpenRefine directory
  • If you are using a different browser, or OpenRefine does not automatically open for you, point your browser at http://127.0.0.1:3333/ or http://localhost:3333 to launch the program.