Instructions to download data for use with Microsoft Excel

After clicking the 'Download' function from the Historical Rain Gauge section or the Calibrated Radar Rainfall section, the 3 Rivers Wet Weather website will provide a comma-separated value (CSV) representation of the data. This data may be copied or saved for import into any CSV-compatible program. Instructions for importing the data into Microsoft Excel can be found below. Note that you may have to widen the timestamp column after importing the data in Excel in order to get the data to show up on the screen.


Netscape Navigator Instructions

After the data appears in the browser window, choose 'Save As...' from the 'File' menu. When choosing a filename, use a '.csv' extension. After the file has been saved, you can double click on the file and Excel will open the file as long as Excel is registered to handle files of type '.csv'. Excel will automatically register itself for '.csv' files when it is installed.


Internet Explorer (Version 6) Instructions

There are two methods for transferring data from the web site into Excel using Internet Explorer. The latest version of Internet Explorer has a bug which adds extra header text when saving a file in '.csv' format. This requires an extra step to move the data into Excel.

Method 1: Saving and Renaming

After the data appears in the browser window, choose 'Save As...' from the 'File' menu. You may see a message stating that the document may not save correctly. You can ignore this warning. When choosing a filename, use a '.txt' extension. This will cause Internet Explorer to write out the data without any additional header text which would be prepended if the '.csv' extension were used. Unfortunately, Excel will import a '.txt' file's lines into a single cell per line which is not very useful. Instead, the '.txt' file needs to be renamed with a '.csv' extension. After the file has been renamed, you can double click on the file and Excel will open the file as long as Excel is registered to handle files of type '.csv'. Excel will automatically register itself for '.csv' files when it is installed.

Method 2: Copying and Saving

This method involves copying and pasting the data into Wordpad which will not add the extra header text to the saved file. Wordpad can usually be found in the Accessories folder of the Start Menu. After the data appears in the browser window, select all of the data using the mouse or by pressing CTRL-A, and then copy the data by pressing CTRL-C or by selecting 'Copy' from the 'Edit' menu. Paste the data into Wordpad, and choose 'Save As...' from the 'File' menu in Wordpad. Choose 'Text Document' as the file type and use a '.csv' extension for the filename. After the file has been saved, you can double click on the file and Excel will open the file as long as Excel is registered to handle files of type '.csv'. Excel will automatically register itself for '.csv' files when it is installed.