Recent change in Export Observations

[rayl]

Platform: Website

App version number, if a mobile app issue:

Browser, if a website issue: Safari

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:

Screenshots of what you are seeing:

Description of problem:Under Export Observations, there are now two sets of Observation Fields, #1 Observation Fields and #2 Observation Fields for Projects. Before this change there was only #1. The fields in the downloaded spreadsheet were in same order as the fields listing on the export page. Now with the change, #1 fields are scrambled and #2 fields are in the original order. Regardless of which I use for the download, the fields are scrambled on the spreadsheet. This makes these downloads incompatible with older downloads, necessitating rearranging the new spreadsheet columns, which, especially with a lot of data, is annoying and rather time consuming. Can you revert back to the how the original downloads worked?

Step 1: Project: Western Redcedar Parks Project.

Step 2: See if you can duplicate it.,

Step 3:

[suncana]

I’ve noticed the same, it’s extremely frustrating. Curating project data takes so much longer now. My project is Caterpillar Rearing Group and I’m using Brave browser.

[tiwane]

Can you please email one of the CSVs to help@inaturalist.org?

[rayl]

I’m sending a CSV and screen shot of the selected Observation Fields. You will notice the fields are now reversed in the CSV.

[suncana]

Will send one too as mine are totally scrambled and are driving me nutty.

[tiwane]

@rayl I don’t see any emails or tickets from you, I’m not sure if you sent one?

@suncana thanks for sending yours.

FWIW this change was initated by me, although I didn’t specify which order the fields should appear in.

Looks like the Export page shows fields in the order the project admin/managers/curators have chosen, eg for https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/caterpillar-rearing-group, here are the top three fields:

And on the export page:

Yet in the CSV file, we order the fields aphabetically. I think we should be consistent here. I wrote an issue.

[tiwane]

Ah, I see @rayl’s ticket now, it was sent using a different email address. Sorry about that.

[suncana]

Yes, thank you, that’s exactly it. Having the option to order your fields allows for more flexibility and customization, so if we could have that back it would be wonderful.

[rayl]

Sorry. I used my other email address. Glad you got it tho.

[tiwane]

This should be fixed.

[suncana]

Yep, back to the how it was. Thank you so, so much.