I continue to be very impressed with the ease of mucking about with FieldtripGB survey data. It has really sped up this second batch of fieldwork, and the automatic linking of my quick tablet photos with their spreadsheet records via Dropbox fills me with joy. (Disclosure: I’m  not affiliated with them and they’re not paying me anything! I just think it’s a neat free tool and am happy I found it).

Checking my results I’ve noticed that multiple duplicate records have been created, seemingly at random (and with unique system-generated IDs, just to make my life interesting).

I did find the program would hang a little when I tried to save records sometimes, and I had to tap ‘save’ again. I thought this was a result of the protective tablet case* I was using making the touch screen less sensitive – perhaps tapping again created a double save? I don’t think this happened 120 times though (I have 120 duplicates).

Anyway, it was easily resolved. I am currently working with Calc in LibreOffice to manage my spreadsheets (MS Office and I are having … time apart) and found this helpful tutorial to speed up the process of detecting and removing duplicates.

Now I have 120 fewer records to worry about categorising! (Phew).

Screen Shot 2016-08-19 at 1.34.08 pm

 

*Cases! I had one Otterbox impact case tucked inside a waterproof case I could wear round my neck in case I needed my hands free. I’m clumsy, OK?