datatools-dev/docs/USER-GUIDE.md

> 🌐 **Language:** English · [Español](USER-GUIDE.es.md)

# User Guide

**Version**: 1.6 · **Updated**: 2026-05-01

## 0. First launch — activation

DataTools must be activated before any tools unlock. On first launch you'll see the **Activate** screen.

Enter your full name + email, paste the license blob from your purchase email (starts with `DTLIC1:`), and click **Activate**. Renewal works the same way — paste the renewal blob, click **Apply renewal**.

**Tiers**:

| Tier | Tools |
|---|---|
| **Lite** | Find Duplicates · Clean Text · Standardize Formats |
| **Core** | All 9 tools |

A Lite user opening a Core-only tool sees an "Upgrade your license" prompt. The home page also shows a 🔒 Locked badge on tool cards your tier doesn't unlock. To upgrade, paste a Core blob on the Activate page.

Every license lasts 1 year. The sidebar shows your tier and days remaining at all times; a renewal warning appears 30 days before expiry. The license file lives at `~/.datatools/license.json` (Windows: `C:\Users\<you>\.datatools\license.json`).

To use the same license on a different machine: deactivate this one (Activate page → **Deactivate this device**) and re-paste your blob on the new machine.

## 1. Install

You don't need Python and you don't need admin rights — the bundle ships its own interpreter and every dependency. Each OS gets a single installer that wires up the Desktop shortcut + Start Menu / Launchpad entry automatically.

### 1.1 Windows

**Installer (`DataTools-<ver>-win-setup.exe`)**

1. Download `DataTools-<ver>-win-setup.exe` from your release email or GitHub Releases.
2. Double-click the installer. On the first run Windows SmartScreen will say **"Windows protected your PC"** — click **More info** → **Run anyway**. (This warning only appears once per build until we have an EV code-signing cert.)
3. Accept the per-user install location (`%LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\DataTools` by default — no admin prompt). Check **Create a desktop shortcut** if you want one (on by default).
4. Click **Install**, then **Finish**. The installer offers to launch DataTools immediately.
5. From now on launch from: **Start Menu → DataTools**, the **Desktop shortcut**, or just type `DataTools` into Windows Run (Win+R) / cmd.

To pin to the taskbar, launch the app once, right-click its icon in the taskbar, then **Pin to taskbar**. Windows requires this manual step — no installer is allowed to pin programmatically.

**Uninstall**: Settings → Apps → DataTools → Uninstall.

### 1.2 macOS

**Installer DMG (`DataTools-<ver>-mac.dmg`)**

1. Download `DataTools-<ver>-mac.dmg`.
2. Double-click the .dmg. A Finder window opens showing the **DataTools** icon and an **Applications** alias.
3. Drag **DataTools** onto **Applications**. Wait for the copy to finish, then eject the DMG.
4. On unsigned builds the first launch shows **"DataTools" cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified**. Fix: right-click DataTools in /Applications → **Open** → confirm **Open** in the dialog. macOS remembers this choice — subsequent launches are clean.
5. Launch from **Launchpad**, **Spotlight** (`⌘ Space` → type "DataTools"), or **Applications** in Finder.

To keep DataTools in the Dock: launch the app, right-click its Dock icon → **Options → Keep in Dock**. macOS doesn't allow installers to pin to the Dock automatically.

**Uninstall**: drag `DataTools.app` to the Trash. Your data files stay where you put them — nothing else is installed.

### 1.3 Linux

`DataTools-<ver>-linux-x86_64.AppImage` is already portable — no separate zip needed.

1. Download the .AppImage.
2. `chmod +x DataTools-*.AppImage`.
3. Double-click, or run it from a terminal.

If your distro doesn't ship FUSE 2: `sudo apt install libfuse2` (Debian/Ubuntu) or equivalent.

### 1.4 What happens on first launch

The launcher (called `DataTools.exe` / `DataTools.app` / `DataTools.AppImage`) does three things, in order:

1. Picks a free TCP port on `127.0.0.1` — usually 8501, falls back through 8502, 8503, … if another app is using 8501.
2. Starts a local Streamlit server on that port. The server is **bound to localhost only**, never to your LAN.
3. Opens your default browser at `http://127.0.0.1:<port>/`. If the browser doesn't open within 5 seconds, paste that URL into your browser manually.

The launcher window stays open in the background. Closing it stops the server — the browser tab will say "this site can't be reached" the next time you click it.

### 1.5 How the GUI works

- Runs locally on your machine. **No internet, no upload.**
- The browser is just the display surface. Closing it does NOT stop the app — close the launcher window (or quit the macOS .app from the Dock) to fully exit.
- Prefer the terminal? Every tool ships with a CLI too (Section 3).

### 1.6 System requirements

- Windows 10/11 (64-bit), macOS 11+, modern Linux (2020+).
- Modern browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, last 3 years).
- ~500 MB free disk space (the bundle itself is ~300 MB; the rest is working scratch space for large CSVs).

**OCR for scanned PDFs is bundled** — Tesseract 5.5 + the English `eng.traineddata` model ship inside every installer / portable / AppImage. The PDF Extractor's scanned-statement path works out of the box; no separate install required. (Developers running from a `pip install -r requirements.txt` checkout still need system Tesseract on `PATH` — see [DEVELOPER.md §PDF Extractor — bundled Tesseract](DEVELOPER.md#pdf-extractor--bundled-tesseract).)

Full numbered support matrix: [REQUIREMENTS.md](REQUIREMENTS.md).

## 2. What's included

| # | Tool | Purpose | Status |
|---|------|---------|--------|
| 01 | Find Duplicates | Exact + fuzzy match, 5 normalizers, audit | Ready |
| 02 | Clean Text | Whitespace, smart chars, BOM, line endings, case ops | Ready |
| 03 | Standardize Formats | Dates / phones / emails / addresses / names / currencies / booleans | Ready |
| 04 | Fix Missing Values | Disguised nulls, imputation, drop-by-threshold | Coming Soon |
| 05 | Map Columns | Rename + enforce schema | Coming Soon |
| 06 | Find Unusual Values | z-score, IQR, multivariate | Coming Soon |
| 07 | Combine Files | Combine multiple files | Coming Soon |
| 08 | Quality Check | Rules + PDF/Excel report | Coming Soon |
| 09 | Automated Workflows | One-click multi-tool launcher | Coming Soon |

**Sample data** (`samples/`): `messy_sales.csv`, `bank_export.xlsx`.

## 3. Usage

### 3.1 GUI (recommended)

1. Launch the bundle.
2. Pick a tool from the sidebar.
3. Drop your file (or select a sample).
4. Defaults are pre-filled — click **Run** to preview.
5. Click **Save Output** to write the cleaned file.

Advanced options are tucked in expander panes. The original file is never modified.

**In-tool Help**: every tool page has a **Help** button right of the title. Click it to open a popover with a compact how-to (When to use · Steps · Examples · Tip). Use it as a refresher mid-task — the popover closes when you click outside, your inputs are untouched.

**Sidebar nav**: the sidebar groups tools into sections (Analysis, Data Cleaners, Transformations, Automations). Each section header shows `+` when collapsed and `−` when expanded — click the header to toggle.

### 3.2 CLI

```bash
deduplicator       customers.csv [--apply]
text-cleaner       messy.csv     [--apply]
format-standardize feed.csv      [--apply]
```

Get help: `deduplicator --help`. Full reference: [CLI-REFERENCE.md](CLI-REFERENCE.md).

### 3.3 Run order (when running tools manually)

If you skip Automated Workflows, follow this order:

1. **02 Clean Text** first — normalizes whitespace + special chars.
2. **03 Standardize Formats** — dates, phones, etc. need cleaned text.
3. **04 Fix Missing Values** — sentinel codes hide as numbers.
4. **05 Map Columns** — schema before outlier stats.
5. **06 Find Unusual Values** — needs clean numerics. Stats on data with `NaN` or `-999` are mathematically poisoned.
6. **07 Combine Files**, **08 Quality Check** as needed.
7. **01 Find Duplicates** is order-flexible (normalizes internally for matching).

Automated Workflows enforces this automatically.

### 3.4 Language

The sidebar has a **Language / Idioma** picker. Two packs ship today:

- **English** (default)
- **Español**

Pick a language once — the choice persists for the session and the picker is visible from every page. Switch any time; the page re-renders in place with no data loss.

**Coverage** (v1.6): home page, tool cards, the upload + analysis panel, the findings list, the Review & Normalize gate prompt, the sidebar picker, and the shutdown screen. Per-tool page bodies (advanced-option labels, column-mapper prompts, dedup review labels) are tracked for future packs — they currently render in English in both modes. If a string you'd expect to switch doesn't, that's a missing pack key, not a bug in the picker; email support with a screenshot.

## 4. Review & Normalize gate

Every uploaded file is scanned before any tool sees it.

**Confidence tiers**:
- **High** — round-trip safe. One-click "Auto-fix high-confidence" applies them all.
- **Medium** — usually right, occasional false positives. Preview first.
- **Low** — heuristic. Off by default; opt in per finding.
- **Error** — blocks the gate (empty file, U+FFFD, unrepairable rows).

**Encoding override**: when the picker reports `encoding_uncertain` or you spot mojibake (`é`) or `<60>` chars, choose the right codepage at the top of the page (cp1252 for Western Excel, KOI8-R for older Russian, Big5 for traditional Chinese, …) → **Re-analyze**.

**Advanced output**: an `⚙️` expander on the download lets you tune encoding, delimiter, and line terminator. The download filename auto-adjusts (`.tsv` for tab, `.csv` otherwise).

## 5. Output

Every run writes:
- **Cleaned file** next to the input (or wherever you specify).
- **Audit file** (per-cell changes for text/format tools, match groups for dedup).
- **Timestamped log** in `logs/`.

Original input is never modified.

## 6. Troubleshooting

- **GUI won't launch / browser doesn't open** — wait 10-15 s; manually visit `http://127.0.0.1:8501` (or whichever port the launcher window prints). Port-in-use error → close other instances. The launcher walks ports 8501–8550 looking for a free one, so a stale instance can shift the URL.
- **Why does my browser open?** — local web app pattern (same as Jupyter, RStudio). Nothing leaves your machine.
- **Windows SmartScreen** — click "More info" → "Run anyway". One-time per build until we have an EV-signed cert.
- **macOS "App is damaged" / "developer cannot be verified"** — right-click the app → **Open** → confirm. If the message persists, the file was likely corrupted in transit — re-download. As a last resort: `xattr -cr /Applications/DataTools.app` clears the quarantine attribute.
- **macOS portable .zip — extracted but won't open** — Safari unzips on download by default; if you see a `__MACOSX/` folder or `._DataTools.app` file you used a different unarchiver. Re-extract with the built-in Archive Utility (right-click the .zip → **Open With → Archive Utility**) so the .app's metadata is preserved.
- **Windows portable .zip — antivirus quarantines DataTools.exe** — your AV doesn't recognize the bundle. Allowlist the extracted folder. The installer .exe trips fewer AV products because it's a known Inno Setup wrapper.
- **Linux AppImage won't run** — `chmod +x file.AppImage`. Missing FUSE → `sudo apt install libfuse2`.
- **Slow on large file** — over ~100k rows takes longer; progress bar shows. Multi-million rows → use the CLI directly.
- **Where does the app store my license / settings?** — `~/.datatools/` on macOS + Linux, `C:\Users\<you>\.datatools\` on Windows. Your input/output files stay where you put them; the app never copies them anywhere else.
- **Need help** — email the address on your purchase receipt.

## 7. License

Single-user. See `LICENSE.txt`.