ANY-maze Help > The ANY-maze reference > The Data page > Copying and saving data

Copying and saving data

Overview

The main use of the Data page is to allow you to transfer data to other programs such as Microsoft Excel, Statistica or SPSS. There are two ways to do this - you can either copy data to the clipboard and then paste it into another program, or you can save it to a file and then open the file in the other program.

Copying data to the clipboard

Copying data to the clipboard is extremely simple. To copy the entire spreadsheet, simply click the Copy button in the Clipboard section of the Data page's ribbon bar. To copy just part of the spreadsheet, first select the cells, columns or rows you want to copy before clicking the Copy button.

Notes:

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When you copy the entire spreadsheet or a selection of columns, the column titles are included; when you copy a selection of cells or rows, they are not.

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Some columns, such as 'Distance travelled', include units (e.g. '2.45m'). When copied, the units are omitted.

Saving data to a file

Although copying and pasting data is the quickest method to transfer data, saving to a file can often be a better technique. The reason for this is because most analytical programs (Excel, SPSS and Statistica included) have 'file import wizards' which will ask you about the data you're importing. For example, in SPSS this allows you (amongst other things) to tell the program that the first row of the file contains variable names.

Saving data is very easy. To save the entire spreadsheet, just click the Save button in the Spreadsheet section of the ribbon bar. To save just part of the spreadsheet, first select the cells, columns or rows you want to save and then click the Save button.

Either way, the Save data window will open, where you can specify a name and location for the file to save to, and also choose the file format to use.

Notes:

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When you save all or part of the spreadsheet, the column titles are always included, even if you're only saving a selection of cells.

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Some columns, such as 'Distance travelled', include units (e.g. '2.45m'). When saved, the units are omitted.

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When you save data to a SYLK file, ANY-maze will ask you if you want to use variable names as the column titles - for full details about this option, see Using 'Variable names' to title columns when saving data to a file.

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When you save data to a dBase file, ANY-maze will automatically use short variable names as the field names.

Formats in which data can be saved

Symbolic link format

Symbolic link format (also known as SYLK format) was designed by Microsoft for transfer of data between spreadsheet programs. As you'd expect, it's supported in many spreadsheet programs, most notably Excel. Saving data in SYLK format has the advantage that formatting (such as fonts, and column widths) is preserved.

Comma-separated values

The Comma-separated values format (also known as CSV format) is a plain-text format, widely used by spreadsheet and database programs. The disadvantage of this format is that formatting is lost.

dBase III/IV format

dBase format was developed for use with the once popular dBase database program. As this program was once the de facto standard database, almost all database and statistics programs support this format. This is definitely the best format to use if you want to manipulate ANY-maze data using a program like Microsoft Access, although this format is only supported up to Access 2010 and not in versions of Access from 2013 onwards.

Tab-separated format

Tab-separated format is another common plain-text data format, and is also widely supported by spreadsheet and database programs. In this case the file will be saved with a .txt extension, so when reading the file, you should select the option to 'Open a text file'.

In fact, apart from the different file extensions, the only real difference between tab- and comma-separated formats is (as the names imply) the fact that in one there are commas between each value, whereas in the other the values are separated by tabs.

Copying and saving data

Overview

Copying data to the clipboard

Saving data to a file

Formats in which data can be saved

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