Good data organization is the foundation of any research project. Most researchers have data in spreadsheets, so it’s the place that many research projects start.

In this lesson, you will learn:

• Good data entry practices - formatting data tables in spreadsheets
• How to avoid common formatting mistakes
• Approaches for handling dates in spreadsheets
• Basic quality control and data manipulation in spreadsheets
• Exporting data from spreadsheets

In this lesson, however, you will not learn about data analysis with spreadsheets. You will learn how to think about data organization and some practices for more effective data wrangling. With this approach you can better format current data and plan new data collection so less data wrangling is needed.

Register for the event, and check out other UC Carpentries Workshops, here: https://www.tim-dennis.com/2026-09-08-uc-carpentries/