You can think of a column in Flatfile the same way as you think of a column in a spreadsheet—it is the group of cells in any given vertical.

Often in spreadsheets, column labels are placed in the first row of the spreadsheet, with data of the described type continuing down the column below the label. Of course, this isn’t the only way that data can be organized. The specifics of your data, how it is labeled, where those labels go, what those labels describe, and the types of data that applies to those labels, are sometimes called the shape of your data. You can describe the shape of your data using a data template.