This Straight to the Point guide provides an introduction to data cleansing, which also goes by names such as data munging and data wrangling. Whatever the name, it basically means doing what needs to be done to make data useful and trustworthy. Data cleansing can include the following tasks:

• Deleting unnecessary headers
• Deleting summary rows
• Filling in gaps
• Flattening a report
• Merging and appending data from multiple sources
• Pulling data from source X to complete data in source Y
• Splitting names from addresses
• Identifying and deleting duplicate records
• Converting units of measurement in multiple sources
• Transposing data so it appears in columns rather than rows