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Essential Spreadsheet Data Cleaning with OpenRefine

This guide accompanies the Galter Health Sciences Library class of the same name, or can be used on its own to learn a few essential data cleaning functions of the open source application OpenRefine.

Sorting and Faceting on Multiple Columns

For most work in OpenRefine, users work on one column at a time in order to sort the spreadsheet by that column or to clean that column's data. However there are options to sort and facet by multiple columns, which allow users to hone in on more specific subsets of data. The next three sections will outline methods and tips for sorting and faceting by multiple columns in OpenRefine.