About — Microreact Local

About Microreact Local

Microreact Local is for anyone who needs Microreact without an internet connection, or who cannot upload data to an external server: public health laboratories, field teams and outbreak investigations working with sensitive data.

The trees, maps, timelines, networks, charts and filters all work as they do on microreact.org. This page covers what is different. For everything else, the Microreact documentation applies unchanged.

What is different from microreact.org

The main difference is where a project lives. On microreact.org, a project is stored on the Microreact servers and opened from a web link. In Microreact Local, a project is a .microreact file on your computer, which you open, save and share like any other document.

	microreact.org	Microreact Local
Where a project is stored	Microreact servers	A .microreact file on your computer
How you open it	A project URL	Open the file, or pick it from Recent projects
Saving	Save to your account (sign-in needed), or download a .microreact file	Save writes to the .microreact file
Sharing	Share a link; set access in the project	Send the file by email, shared drive or USB
Account and sign-in	Needed to save to the server	None
Project management	My Account: folders, stars, bin, access settings	Your own folders and files
Internet connection	Needed	Not needed
Data on external servers	Yes, once saved	No

One file holds everything. A .microreact file contains the whole project: the data and every setting, including panel layout, colours, filters and saved views. Anyone with a copy can see all the data in it, so treat it as you would the original data files.

Install and first launch

Download the installer for your system from Downloads.
Install it as you would any desktop application. You need an internet connection only for this step.
Open Microreact Local. The home screen offers two choices: Open a .microreact file or Create new project.

The left sidebar holds the same actions:

Create a project

Creating a project works as it does on the web, except that your files come from your own computer.

Choose Create new project, or + in the sidebar.
Drag your data files into the window, or browse for them. Microreact Local accepts the same file formats as microreact.org: metadata tables, trees, networks and matrices.
Choose the ID column, the column that links rows across all your files.
Arrange panels, colours and filters as you need. See Adding and editing panels.
Save. You are asked where to store the new .microreact file.

Not available offline

Add URLs, which loads files hosted elsewhere, and projects linked to Google Sheets .
Online map backgrounds .

Save, open and share .microreact files

Save

Saving writes your changes to the project’s .microreact file. To keep the original unchanged, save under a new name instead . As on the web, there is no version history beyond undo in the current session, so keep a copy of the file before major changes.

Open

Choose Open a .microreact file, use Open in the sidebar, or pick from Recent. Double-clicking a .microreact file opens it in Microreact Local.

Send the .microreact file the way you send any document: email, a shared drive, a secure file transfer or USB. The recipient opens it in Microreact Local, or drags it onto microreact.org/upload.

Keep data safe. The file holds the full dataset, not a link to it. Share it only with people who may see all of the data, and follow your organisation’s rules for sensitive data.

Moving between Microreact Local and microreact.org

Both versions use the same .microreact file, so a project can move either way.

From microreact.org to Local

Open the project on the web, click the disk icon at top right and choose Download as .microreact file. Open that file in Microreact Local. See Saving and version control.

From Local to microreact.org

Drag the .microreact file onto microreact.org/upload. Then save it to your account to get a link you can share. This places the data on the Microreact servers, so do it only when that is permitted.

Everything else works as on the web

These pages of the Microreact documentation apply to Microreact Local unchanged:

Navigating within a project, including history, selection and views
Supported file formats and metadata column types
Adding and editing panels: tree, map, timeline, network, charts, matrix, notes
Selecting and filtering data
Labels, colours and shapes
Tips and FAQ

These pages cover the online service and do not apply offline: Managing projects, Access control and sharing, URL control options and the API.

Questions or problems: contact the Microreact team.