How to Open TDMS Files in Excel

Metadata lets you save additional test information with your SoundCheck results. In this short support tips video we demonstrate how to open up that data in Excel for further manipulation and analysis.

Additional Resources for SoundCheck and Metadata

Detailed explanations of how to check metadata in SoundCheck can be found in the SoundCheck manual.

Learn more about our metadata enhancements by watching this video.

Video Transcript: How to Open TDMS Files in Excel

Metadata was introduced in SoundCheck 21 and it’s useful because it lets you save test information such as product name, factory location, test operator, or even subjective ratings, along with the test results. Let’s take a look at how to open up that data in Excel for further manipulation and analysis.

Here, I’ve modified the standard speaker test sequence that we provide with SoundCheck, to save product name, factory location and test operator data as well as the measurements – fundamental, THD and average sensitivity – to a TDMS file on my desktop.

Now we’ll run the sequence, and you can see we have a measurement and it’s saved as a TDMS file on my desktop.

To open this in Excel, we first need to download the National Instruments TDMS Excel add-in from their website.

Now that’s downloaded and installed, we can open up a blank Excel workbook, go to the ‘Add In’ page, and here you see the TDM importer button on the left hand side. We’ll click on this, and navigate to the test data file and open it. You can see this brings in all the measurements, as well as the metadata that we added to the sequence. 

This makes it simple to manipulate and analyze your results including all the additional information contained in your metadata.