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Frequently Asked Questions
for CollageWrangler

  • What is CollageWrangler?
    CollageWrangler is a powerful and easy data prep tool, implemented as an Excel Add-in, which enables users to organise data easily and effectively without the need for formulas, cutting and pasting or SQL
  • Who is CollageWrangler made for?
    CollageWrangler is for anyone who works with data from multiple sources to get specific answers.
  • Why should I use CollageWrangler?
    If you are a data user in any capacity CollageWrangler is for you. Whether or not you are already a data professional, Collage will help you prepare data efficiently and effectively with fewer errors and in less time than other available methods.
  • Where is the data?
    Source data is located anywhere the user can access. The CollageWrangler copy of the source data and any data sets produced by CollageWrangler are on the users’ workstations.
  • Does the user dump data?
    It is not expected that the user would dump the data from the databases. The dumps are meant to be Table dumps with no filtering. Basically a ‘Select *’ command that can be set up to happen on a regular basis
  • Can you have more than one relationship exist between two data files?
    Yes. In the event there is more than one relationship, or if the relationships don’t have the same name, the user is then required to indicate the relationship.
  • Can any kind of industry specific data be used?
    Yes, CollageWrangler is completely data driven. Just as you can use any data in an Excel sheet you can use any data in CollageWrangler. The data is your data.
  • Does CollageWrangler alter original data?
    No. CollageWrangler makes a copy of all original data and uses the copy. If the user wants to change the original data, the save function in CollageWrangler can be used.
  • How does CollageWrangler do joins?
    All joins (merges) are left inner joins. The data in the source data is on the left and related data on the right. The swap function can be used to swap left and right. The NOT function will produce the data from a left outer join as a result list, which includes only the “outer” portion of the join.
  • Can you add filters to joins?
    Yes. Filters can be added to joins by using the selection data function on the right data set. See video on filtered merges.
  • I use VLOOKUP in Excel to combine data from two different spreadsheets. How can I do this in CollageWrangler?
    CollageWrangler uses its merge, merge filtered and merge NOT functions to combine sheets.
  • Is there a way in CollageWrangler to reorder columns?
    Yes. You can do this in a couple of ways. First, when you use a CollageWrangler function to create a new result you can drag and drop the order of the output columns. There is also the Extract function which allows the user to pull columns from a sheet and put them into a specific order.
  • What is CollageWrangler’s capacity?
    CollageWrangler is RAM based and therefore RAM is the limiting factor. An i5 with 16GB of RAM has been tested using 10M rows from a CSV file.
  • Can I add columns to the CollageWrangler result file?
    Yes, there are two ways to do this. First, in CollageWrangler the user can use the add Column function. This will add a column with values based on arithmetic functions. Secondly, the CollageWrangler result files are Excel sheets (with the exception of csv files which appear with brown headers) The user can edit the sheet as any other EXCEL sheet but when finished needs to select the “Refresh” function to make the changes available to CollageWrangler.
  • I’m loading csv files but many of the dates are coming up as incorrect
    CollageWrangler supports two date formats dd/MM/yyyy and MM/dd/yyyy You can set a default value using the Settings function. Consult the video in the Using CollegeWrangler (General) section titled Settings.
  • What data formats can CollageWrangler use as input?
    XLSX and CSV
  • How do I install CollageWrangler?
    Consult the video on the "Free Trial" page of our Website or our YouTube channel.

Click on YouTube button to learn more about CollageWrangler's easy functionality 

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