The data for this lesson is a part of the Data Carpentry Ecology workshop.
It is a teaching version of the Portal Database. The data in this lesson
is a subset of the teaching version that has been intentionally ‘messed up’
for this lesson.
The data for this lesson and the workshop are in the
Portal Project Teaching Database
available on FigShare, with a CC-BY license
available for reuse.
Software
For this lesson you will need OpenRefine (formerly Google Refine) 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.
Windows
If you have Internet Explorer (or Edge) set as your default web browser, check that you have Firefox or Chrome installed and set either of them as your
default browser. OpenRefine runs in your default browser, but will not run correctly in Internet Explorer.
Learn how to set your browser as default by clicking on this link for Google Chrome and this link for Firefox.
Select the most recent version of OpenRefine (do not select beta versions or the release candidates). The version that you should download will be at the top of the page and named OpenRefine 3.1 for example.
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 by clicking on openrefine.exe (this will launch a command prompt window first; ignore that, and wait for OpenRefine to launch in the web browser, which is where you will interact with the program).
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.
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.
Select the most recent version of OpenRefine (do not select beta versions or the release candidates). The version that you should download will be at the top of the page and named OpenRefine 3.1 for example.
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.
Select the most recent version of OpenRefine (do not select beta versions or the release candidates). The version that you should download will be at the top of the page and named OpenRefine 3.1 for example.
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.