The datafile

Description

Many users find it convenient to prepare their data in Excel or Access. However, the data must be exported from these programs in either .csv (Comma separated values) or .txt (TAB separated values) form for ASReml to read it. Care must be taken with missing values which commonly appear as empty fields, NA, * or .. ASReml will not recognise empty fields except in .csv files, and TAB delimited files if the !CSV qualifier is specified.

ASReml has a facility to convert an .xls file to a .csv file. It is invoked if there is no .csv file or .as with the same basename. It will also convert a Genstat .gsh spreadsheet file to .csv format. The data extracted are labels, numerical values and the results from formulae. A label of * in an otherwise numerical column is taken as a missing value as are empty cells. Empty rows at the start and end of a block are trimmed, but empty rows in the middle of a block are kept. Empty columns are also ignored. A single row of labels as the first non-empty row in the block will be taken as column/field names. Empty cells in this row will have a default names C1, C2 etc. assigned.

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