How to standardize spreadsheet data
Standardizing means the same thing is written the same way every time, so filtering, grouping and joining behave. Omixa applies consistent formats to the values it can read safely and flags the ones it cannot.
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What can be standardized
Dates that can only be read one way become YYYY-MM-DD. Phone numbers lose stray spaces, brackets and hyphens. Emails are trimmed and lowercased. Countries (NG, nigeria) resolve to one name, gender and yes/no spellings are unified, currency labels such as naira and ₦ become NGN, and categories that differ only by case, spaces, dots or hyphens are merged.
Capitalisation is fixed where it is clearly inconsistent: names typed in one case become Title Case, and ID prefixes follow the column's majority. Mixed-case names such as McDonald or O'Brien are never touched.
What is left alone on purpose
A date like 03/04/2025 could mean 3 April or 4 March. Omixa does not guess from other cells: ambiguous, impossible and placeholder dates stay exactly as uploaded and the column is flagged. Column names are only changed if you choose "Standardize column names", which turns Customer Name into customer_name.
Control with Omixa Pro
Pro adds per-column rules and saved cleaning profiles, so you can set a rule once, such as the phone country or a custom replacement, and apply it to every file.
Steps
- Upload your file and read the findings.
- Pick the standardizing rules you want.
- Resolve ambiguous values you are asked about.
- Download the file and check the before and after preview.
Common questions
Which date format does Omixa use?
Clear dates are written as YYYY-MM-DD. Ambiguous ones are left unchanged and flagged.
Does Omixa standardize phone numbers for different countries?
Yes. It supports Nigerian and international formats, and asks for a country when a number needs one.
Can I undo a change?
Your original file is never modified, and you can re-run from it with different rules.
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