Save a .tmga File

The .tmga file format

Tabmega doesn’t manipulate CSVs directly, and instead imports the data into it’s own file format .tmga. It is similar to importing CSV files into a single .xlsx file with Excel. This approach has several benefits:

• Your original CSV files stay untouched, so you don’t have to worry about corrupting the original data.
• The .tmga format is much faster than .csv or .xlsx files for performing calculations on big data. See the Tech Stack section if you are interested in how this speedy processing works.
• A .tmga file is easy to share with teammates because all the analysis and data are combined into a single file, instead of needing to share multiple files.

Until we save our file, our data and analysis live in a temporary .tmga file somewhere on our computer. This allows Tabmega to recover unsaved files, similar to Excel. Of course, it’s best practice to save to a permanent file as early as possible.

Using the Save as… button

Let’s save a .tmga file, which will contain our imported data and future analysis.

1. Click on the Save as… button.
2. Find a good spot on your computer to save the file. We’ll call it movielens_25m_tutorial.tmga and click the Save button.
3. Now that the file is saved, you should see that Autosave is on. All your future data imports, formulas, and editing will be automatically saved to this file.