Importing Result Types from Excel

LIMS’ integrated Excel interface allows importing analysis results from Excel into both the Results by Analyte and Results by Sample screens. Result values, result types (i.e. short pre-defined text), and a combination of result type and value (e.g. < 0.1) can all be imported from Excel. Understanding how LIMS detects a result type in an Excel cell will help you use this important feature of the Excel interface.

To detect result types when importing the contents of an Excel cell, LIMS follows a sequence of steps when parsing the cell’s contents. First, the system checks if the cell’s contents exactly match the value in the Report Format column on the Result Types setup screen for any result type. If an exact match is found, the system imports the cell as the result type. In the example Result Types setup screen below, note that the ‘Positive’ and ‘Negative’ result types use report formats of ‘Pos’ and ‘Neg’, respectively. In order to import these result types from Excel, a cell must contain the abbreviated ‘Pos’ and ‘Neg’ report format. Note that if the Analyses setup screen limits results entry to specific result types for an analyte, only those result types can be imported from Excel.

Next, if the cell’s contents do not exactly match a result type’s report format, LIMS will temporarily replace any number in the cell with the number sign ‘#’ and see if the result exactly matches a result type’s report format. For example, if the cell contains “< 0.1” LIMS will look for a result type with a report format of ‘< #’. If an exact match is found, the cell’s contents are imported as a combination of result type and value.

Finally, if no result type has been found and the cell’s contents are numeric the result value is imported.