In Geneious Prime 2020.1 onwards you can add metadata to your Geneious documents by importing it from a .csv or .tsv file. Your file of metadata needs to have one field in common with the documents you want to import the data onto, such as the name or sequence ID field, so that Geneious can match the data to the correct document.
Prior to importing the file, the metadata fields you plan to add from your spreadsheet need to be set up in Geneious. To check which fields are present and to add new fields, select any document and go to the Info tab. Click Edit Metadata types to see the list of fields currently available in Geneious. For a step by step guide to adding new metadata fields, see How do I add custom metadata fields to my sequence?
In the example shown here, the spreadsheet contains information on sampling location, sampling date and freezer storage location for our sequenced samples. In the screenshot below I have added the metadata fields for these spreadsheet columns under a new metadata type called "Sampling information".
Once the appropriate metadata fields are set up, you can proceed with importing your data.
To do this, first select the folder containing the documents you want to add the metadata to. Then go to File - Import - From File, select CSV/TSV as the format, and select your file of metadata. Or alternatively, just drag and drop your CSV file into the folder.
In the Import Documents window, click on Metadata as the type of document to import. Under Match document, select the fields in your Geneious documents and spreadsheet file which contain matching data. In the example below, the document name in Geneious matches the Sample ID column in the spreadsheet. The entries in these fields much match exactly - you can check the entries which match in the Result Preview tab, as shown below.
You now need to choose the fields on your Geneious document where you want the metadata information to be added in the Metadata mapping box.
All metadata types currently available in your database should show up in the Metadata dropdown menu, including those you added yourself. Click the Fields... button to map the fields in each metadata type to the columns in your spreadsheet. For example, in the screenshot below the spreadsheet columns for Sampling Location, Sampling date, and Freezer location have been added under the Sampling Information metadata type, and the Organism column has been added under the Standard Fields type.
Your Result Preview window should now show a preview of the fields that will be imported onto your Geneious documents, including any errors or rows in the spreadsheet where there is no matching document in the Geneious folder.
Once you are happy with how the import looks, click OK to load the metadata. You should now see the metadata in the document table (you may need to scroll to the right hand side of the table to see the new columns).
