Dataharvest 2025 - the European Investigative Journalism Conference

When you unlock the power of regular expressions (RegEx) you supercharge your spreadsheet!

Participants will learn how to extract hidden patterns from text, clean messy datasets, and automate repetitive tasks using the RegEx formulas within Google Sheets (but this session is also a good intro if you want to apply it in other code).

Through practical examples—like extracting donations, cleaning salutation-heavy lists, and extracting postcodes—you will leave with the confidence to apply RegEx in your day-to-day data work.

Attendees will receive a RegEx cheat sheet (customisable for their own use) and a practical demo spreadsheet to take their skills to the next level. No prior experience of RegEx is required, but you should be comfortable writing formulas in Google Sheets/Excel. I will be sharing a Google Sheet containing the data for which you will require a Google account.