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Spreadsheets

Google Sheets, CSV Upload, and Excel Online

File formats

Causal can connect to the following spreadsheet file formats:

  • Google Sheets (sync)
  • CSV (upload)
  • Excel Online

The key thing to note is that Google Sheets and Excel Online are a sync (i.e. you can hit refresh in Causal and it will pull in the latest data automatically), whereas CSV works via manual upload.

Data formats

Causal supports three data formats for spreadsheet files, click into each below to learn more about the ingestion formats Causal requires.

Templates

Google sheets formatting

  • Make sure dates are formatted as Numbers, not Text. The =ISDATE() function in Google Sheets can be used to check that.

CSV formatting

  • It is best to format dates in YYYY-MM-DD format (e.g. 2020-02-01) because it is unambiguous, but you can configure Causal to recognise day/month/year or month/day/year formats when uploading your CSV file.
  • Numbers should be plainly formatted (e.g. 120.99) without punctuation or symbols.

Column type detection

Causal tries to guess the type of your columns based on the data in that column. If it guesses incorrectly, you can force the type by adding an annotation to the column header. Annotations are in square brackets and come after the column name, e.g. start date [date].

  • Use [date] to force Causal to interpret the column as date values.
  • Use [number] to force Causal to interpret the column as numbers.
  • Use [category] to force Causal to interpret the column as a Category.

Dates in Excel Online

If the dates in your Excel sheets are not recognised correctly in Causal you might have to change the Date format to "English (United States)": Microsoft Docs