Download the correct distribution of RightField for your machine here: http://www.rightfield.org.uk

When you have downloaded RightField, it is installed by simply unzipping the distribution. You will require Java 6 or higher to run it

To open RightField, go into the unzipped folder and double-click ‘rightfield’.

A blank worksheet is presented on the left of the screen and a blank ontology browser is presented on the right.

To open an existing spreadsheet in RightField, go to ‘File’ -> ’Open workbook’. You can open any spreadsheet containing single or multiple worksheets.

If the file has already been marked-up in RightField, a dialogue box will ask you if you wish to open the same ontologies as before. In this case, select ‘no’.
Once the spreadsheet is open, we can start marking-up particular cells by importing ontologies from your local machine, or from the BioPortal. To open an ontology from the BioPortal, go to ‘File’ -> ‘Open from BioPortal’. For this example, find the MGED ontology from the drop-down list.

The chosen ontology will appear on the right hand side. In the search box at the top of ontology hierarchy, search for ExperimentDesignType. Look at the subclasses by clicking on ExperimentDesignType and expanding the tree.

To Mark-up a cell, or a range of cells, select them in the spreadsheet view, then select the ontology term and select the ‘Type of allowed values’ underneath the ontology hierarchy. Once you are happy with your selection, click the Apply button to add the change to the cells. For this example, we will mark-up cell B10 with all the direct subclasses of ExperimentDesignType.
Select cell B10, select ‘ExperimentDesignType’ in the ontology and select ‘Direct subclasses’.

When a cell has been marked-up, the cell will change to a green colour.
Mark-up other cells, or ranges of cells and save the spreadsheet by selecting ‘File’ -> ‘Save Workbook’.
When you open the spreadsheet normally, any marked-up cells will be shown in yellow. Each yellow cell will have a drop-down list of allowed values from your chosen ontologies.

Viewing Hidden Data

RightField encapsulates and stores information about ontology terms used inside the spreadsheets in hidden sheets. This ensures that no provenance information is lost regarding the ontology version used for annotation and it allows the storage of unique identifiers for ontology terms as well as the term labels.
The information in hidden sheets is cruicial for the extraction and storage of the spreadsheet data in other formats and for searching over the data.
If you want to view this hidden information, you can use the RightField Inspector application here: http://inspect.rightfield.org.uk/
In future versions of RightField, this hidden information will also be accessible from the native, marked-up spreadsheets.