Step 3: Create QIIME2 compatible metadata file - shenjean/diversity GitHub Wiki
QIIME2's metadata file is a tab-separated text file.
First row and first column must be sample-id. Subsequent columns is based on your metadata. Second row must start with #q2:types. Subsequent columns specify whether the corresponding column in the first row is categorical or numeric.
sample-id gender age
#q2:types categorical numeric
01bas m 65
01end m 65
01mid m 65
02bas f 65
02mid f 65
04end f 58
04mid f 58
Once you are happy with the file, save it as, for example, metadata.txt.
You can visualize your metadata file:
qiime metadata tabulate --m-input-file metadata.txt --o-visualization metadata.qzv