How To


To Start:

Please read over this guide carefully. I realize this is an extremely long and detailed guide, but if you don't follow these instructions to a T, this tool may not work as expected.

This tool assumes you already have a .csv file in the expected format. If you don't know what a .csv file is, click here for an explanation.

You can get a .csv file by:

You will need at least 2 columns:

  • Ingredients
  • Result
You can add other columns, but the tool will ignore them. The column names are case sensitive, which means the column name has to be "Ingredients" and not "ingredients" or "iNgrediEnts".

Example Sheets and Templates

Here are example spreadsheets that you can base your .csv on, if you'd like:
  • A very rough and basic spreadsheet template that will work with this tool, with some examples: here
  • Part of my spreadsheet, exported on 9/9/2019 from Google Sheets. It is not up to date and only presented here as a working example of what your spreadsheet could look like: here
  • The spreadsheet I copied my spreadsheet from originally, from Snow White and the Asian Pear. You will need to make changes to this spreadsheet if you want it to be compatible with this tool: here
I prefer to use Google Sheets, but you can use whatever spreadsheet software tool you want.

Formatting Your .csv File

Ingredients Column

The Ingredients column can take in a Cosdna link or a list of comma separated ingredients. You can have a mix of both in the spreadsheet.

CosDna link

You can input a CosDna link to a specific product, such as: http://www.cosdna.com/eng/cosmetic_f0ff366349.html.

There's no specific way you need to format the link, so long as it's a link to the particular product. Just put the link in and the tool will do the work scraping the ingredients from the product page.

Comma separated ingredients list

The Ingredients column expects ingredients separated by commas with a space before it, e.g.:

Water, Glycerin, Butylene Glycol, Rice Ferment Filtrate (Sake), Glutamic Acid, Arginine, Leucine, Ceramide 3, Ceramide 6, Placental Protein, Arbutin,Dipotassium Glycyrrhizate (Licorice Root Extract), Glycine Soja (Soybean) Protein, Maltitol, Methyl Gluceth-10, Peg-6 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Hydroxyethylcellulose, Sodium Styrene/Acrylates Copolymer, Citric Acid, Sodium Citrate, Phenoxyethanol, Methylparaben, Fragrance

Important notes:

  • the tool will NOT work if ingredients are separated by:
    • only white spaces (e.g. Water Glycerin Butylene Glycol Rice Ferment Filtrate (Sake), etc)
    • commas with no spaces in between (e.g. Water,Glycerin,Butylene Glycol,Rice Ferment Filtrate (Sake), etc)
  • the following synonyms of water will be replaced with "water" in the spreadsheet: "aqua", "eau", "h20", "purified water", "water purified"
  • the tool is NOT case sensitive, so if your ingredients are in caps or differently cased, the tool will make them all lowercase
  • if there is an ingredient that has a comma in them, such as "1,2-hexanediol", the tool will count it as a single ingredient, but it won't show up properly in the CSV

Getting ingredients lists:

If you want to get ingredient lists for products you use, you have a few options:
  • Search Incidecoder for your product and copy the ingredients list
  • If you don't want to put Cosdna links in your spreadsheet, you can put a Cosdna product link through the Cosdna scraper tool
  • Use good, old-fashioned Google for your product name, find the ingredients list, and format it accordingly
This tool isn't perfect. It's just meant to make ingredient comparing a lot easier. You should still look over the returned .csv yourself and make any corrections.

Results Column

The Results column expects these values:
  • Safe products: "safe", "good", or "yes"
  • Bad products: "allergic", "bad", or "no"
  • Untested products or products without verdict: "TBD"

Tables and Download Options

The tables, by default, will only show the top 10 ingredients, sorted by quantity (how often they appear in the whole spreadsheet) from each category.

If you want to see the whole list, you will need to download the spreadsheet. You can change the name of your download file in the text box. By default, it will be [LISTNAME].csv. The download location will be your browser's specified download location.

There are several options for you to download. You can download
  • safe list
    • a list with all the ingredients under the "safe" products and their counts
  • safe list exclusive
    • a list with all the ingredients under the "safe" products and their counts, excluding any ingredients that have appeared in the allergic column
  • allergic list
    • a list with all the ingredients under the "allergic" products and their counts
  • alergic list exclusive
    • a list with all the ingredients under the "allergic" products and their counts, excluding any ingredients that have appeared in the safe column
  • shared list
    • a list with ALL the ingredients and their counts

Quick Compare

The quick compare tool works very similarly to the spreadsheet tool on the homepage. You will not need a .csv -- you input either a Cosdna link or a list of comma separated ingredients.

You will get two lists: the shared list gives you all the ingredients the two products shared, and the unique list gives you all the ingredients the two products do not share. Similarly, it will only show ten ingredients and you will need to download the files to see the whole list.

These lists will not give back the counts, since they either share or do not share these ingredients.