Downloading

I've never used the download records page but I've had a quick look at "using the download page" in the help section and it says that the download is in the form of a csv file.

You don't say which spreadsheet software you're using but csv files can usually be imported into most spreadsheet programs pretty easily. It might take a bit of faffing around to get the data into the spreadsheet exactly as you want it but there is usually a wizard or dialogue box (with various options) to help simplify that task. Try looking for "import csv file" or similar in the help file of your spreadsheet program.

Unfortunately, there's no straightforward way to download an arbitrary group of records, due to the following restrictions:

Records to access: this allows you to select your own records (“My records”) to download, and if you have participated in iRecord Activities, or if you have a verification role or other assigned role you will be able to select that and download the relevant records.

This seems to imply you'll need to contact the admins and ask to be assigned a relevant role in order to download what you need.

I don't know why iRecord imposes such a restrictive policy, given that open access to data is one of the basic principles of citizen science. The terms of use require everyone to agree that their "wildlife observations (excluding photos) can be made publicly available for wider use", so there's no reason why the site shouldn't facilitate that for all registered users. It makes little sense that we can freely browse all the records, and even add comments to them, and yet we cannot easily download our own community's publicly shared data.

Thanks to both for your constructive replies.

I will see what admin have to say