Skip to content

flexStats Features

Data Import & Cleaning

macos · Available since v1.0

Data Import & Cleaning

Problem

Real-world spreadsheets are messy. They have merged headers, footnote rows, subtotals, currency symbols embedded in numbers, dates stored as text, and mixed data types in the same column. Most visualization tools punt this to the user — flexStats doesn’t.

Solution

Drag a CSV or Excel file into flexStats. The import pipeline detects the structure automatically — header rows, data rows, footnotes, subtotals — and surfaces issues in a visual cleaning table. Users fix problems with clicks, not formulas.

User Stories

  • As a team lead, I can drag my quarterly Excel report into flexStats and see a clean preview of the data without manually fixing formatting issues.
  • As an operations manager, I can override flexStats’s column type detection when it guesses wrong (e.g., ZIP codes detected as numbers).
  • As a consultant, I can import a client’s messy spreadsheet and have flexStats handle merged headers and footnote rows automatically.

UI Flow

  1. Drag a .csv or .xlsx file onto the app window (or use File > Import)
  2. flexStats runs the detection pipeline: header row, data types, structure issues
  3. The Import Wizard shows the detected structure with issues highlighted
  4. The Cleaning Table lets you confirm or override each suggestion
  5. On confirmation, flexStats writes a cleaned CSV into the .flexstats bundle and preserves the original for refresh

Detection Capabilities

  • Header row detection — scans the first several rows, picks the most likely header
  • Footnote detection — identifies trailing rows with asterisks, merged cells, or content after blank rows
  • Subtotal detection — finds rows containing “Total” / “Subtotal” / “Grand Total”
  • Multi-table detection — spots blank-row separations between distinct data grids
  • Currency column detection — recognizes cells starting with $, EUR, GBP, JPY, etc.
  • Date column detection — matches common date string patterns
  • Mixed type detection — flags columns where >10% of cells don’t match the majority type

Platforms

  • macOS: Full import and cleaning experience

Known Limitations

  • Legacy .xls format is not supported (user must re-save as .xlsx first)
  • Multi-table sheets surface both tables but the user must choose which to import
  • Very complex merged-cell layouts may require manual adjustment

Marketing One-Liner

Smart data import that handles the mess so you don’t have to.

Related features