My uploaded data isn't properly translated in Datawrapper.

Make sure that you import a well-structured data file. That means: 

  1. Delete everything above the header. Excel files often come with information in extra rows above the actual data. Datawrapper won't be able to make sense out of that. Simply get rid of all empty rows and all information above the header.
  2. Don't upload double-row headers. The header should be in one row, and this first row needs to contain labels for your data.
  3. Unmerge cells and get rid of double-row headers
  4. Bring metrics in the header: To make sure that data tools like Datawrapper and Excel recognize numbers, ensure you have undisturbed numbers in our data cells. So free your data cells of all €, $, kg, %, km/h, etc. Instead, put them in the headers. And don’t worry: You can add back metrics, %-signs and any other kind of prefix and suffix when creating a chart in Datawrapper.
  5. Delete footnotes in the data. Values like 28.394† or 1.39[^1] won’t be recognized as numbers by Datawrapper.
  6.  Delete thousands separators. Thousands separators are characters (, in English, . in German, sometimes it’s just a space) that make it easy to recognize the magnitude of a number. For example, 38.394.105 rounds faster to 38 million in our minds than 38394105. But while they’re great and helpful for humans, they’re hard to parse for charting tools like Datawrapper – especially because they’re so different in all countries.
  7. Correct dates. Datawrapper recognizes many different date formats like “Q4 2019”, “2019-11-01” or “11-2019”, so you can simply copy & paste columns with dates in step 1 of the app. If you’re not sure, check our list of “Date formats that Datawrapper recognizes”.
  8. Bring the data in the wide format. Sometimes, your data will be in a different layout: The “long” format. In the long format, each value has its own row. Datawrapper won’t be able to handle the long format, so you’ll need to convert it to the wide format first. To transform data from the long format to the wide format, you can use a feature called “pivot tables” in Excel or Google Sheets. You can learn how to use them in our article “How to get data in the right format with pivot tables”.

If you need more information, visit our thorough blog post on the topic: "How to prepare your data for analysis and charting in Excel & Google Sheets". If you're uploading CSVs, we have a separate tutorial about using .csv files for data uploads.