columns

Columns

Open Settings ▸ Columns, or choose Data ▸ Column Settings…, to configure a column. Settings are stored per project, keyed by the column's header name, so renaming other columns does not disturb them.

Column type

A column's type, set under Data types, controls how qrate treats its values. A column with no type set is Text.

• Text: a plain field. Only Text and Title columns are spell-checked.

• Title: the primary human-readable name of a row.

• Filename: links each row to a file. See Files and photos and Diagnostics.

• Date: checked against the date format chosen in Settings ▸ Table ▸ Checks ▸ Date format, so a malformed or ambiguous date is flagged:

  • EDTF (the default) also allows uncertain and approximate dates such as 1987? and 1987~, and intervals such as 1987/1989.
  • ISO 8601 only allows YYYY, YYYY-MM, and YYYY-MM-DD, and an interval of two of them.
  • Lenient allows everything EDTF does, plus the ways catalogues often write an approximate date: circa 1920, ca. 1920, c. 1920, a decade such as 1920s, and a bracketed guess such as [1920?] or [ca. 1920].

  Changing the format checks every Date column again. A project can override your default; see Projects.

• Number, Url, and Identifier: an accession number, call number, or other identifier belongs in an Identifier column.

• Description Level, Parent Component, and Source Path: show a row's archival level, its parent, and the path it was imported from. See Groups.

To reuse a column setup, choose Config file ▸ Export… at the bottom of the page. The resulting CSV can be loaded in the New Project wizard or with Data ▸ Load Column Config….

Description

Add a short description to a column under Descriptions to document what it is for. It shows as a tooltip on the column header, for anyone else who opens the project.

Multi-value cells

Set Multi-value cells ▸ Value separator, for example |, when one cell holds several values, as in Film|Video. Filters and checks then treat each part as its own value.

Spell check

Turn spell check on or off per column under Spelling ▸ Spell-checked columns. The languages ticked on the separate Settings ▸ Spelling page take part in automatic language selection; the first one ticked chooses the preferred regional spelling when variants exist.

Value variants

Turn on value-variant review for columns where inconsistent displayed forms matter, such as people, organizations, places, subjects, collection titles, and controlled labels. qrate suggests similar values already present in that column but never merges them automatically.

Authority lists

Under Checked against, pick the authority a column is checked against: LCSH, Wikidata, or GeoNames. qrate flags a value that the authority does not recognize and can suggest the closest match as a fix. Values are checked over the network, so a finding appears once the answer arrives rather than as you type.

GeoNames needs an activated GeoNames web-services account. If GeoNames rejects the account, qrate stops the remaining requests and shows one warning. Change the account under Settings ▸ Columns ▸ Authority accounts to retry.

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