Unless you are a scripting guru, you probably spend more time on CDD import file preparation than you want to. If you find yourself mostly copy/pasting data from other sources and manually rearranging them to fit the CDD import format, we built some handy excel templates that will greatly reduce the amount of time and effort required to get the files ready.
We've collected some useful examples of excel templates that our customers have requested in the past, and added them into this public forum accessible for download. In addition to saving time, these will also cut down on manual work, and thus on errors that come with that territory.
Before we continue, let's state our assumptions. Always state your assumptions first!
- You manually transform data from a plate matrix format to the CDD standard "list" format, and you want to stop.
- You follow the same plate layout between experiments. If you don't, you can use the templates anyway, but you will have more work each time.
- Your instrument produces consistently formatted raw data files that you can copy/paste.
Below is a set of generic templates to assist with the most common task of data transformation: transposing matrix or plate format to the long and skinny list format.
These template are available for you to download and use directly, or modify to suit your specific needs. Every experiment is a little different, so you can customize the templates to make the data set-up process even quicker. For example, you can enter and save the equation for your dose-response dilution series, so that you don't have to type it in every single time.
These templates are located in the downloads section of the knowledge base, and more will be added periodically. If you develop one that you feel may be useful to others, please add it to the knowledge base too!
When you open the template on your machine, make sure to click "enable macros" when prompted. If you don't do this, the template will work only partially- the buttons will be disabled.
Which brings us to the next point- these templates are provided to you "as is", meaning, use them at your own risk. This means that we promise that we have vetted all of the code used in the template, but we do not promise that everything will work on your machine exactly how it did on our test machines. You will see that each template comes with a handy legal disclaimer.
Each template has two sheets: a worksheet, and a CDD-ready sheet.
The worksheet is for you to fill in with your data.
The CDD sheet of the template must be saved as a separate CSV file, which can then be imported into the CDD Vault. Luckily, each template's CDD sheet has a "SAVE CSV" button which generates such a file called "ExportedData-yyymmddhhmmss", and it will be placed in the same folder where you've saved your template. You can always save as csv the old-fashioned way by clicking "save as" and choosing a name and location for this file.
When you're finished with the template, just close without saving.
You can find some templates for 96, 384 and 1538 well plate format here in our download section.
If you'd like to request a brand new template, please contact support.