Best way to handle producing many, many tables with moderately complex formatting
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One of our statisticians needs to produce a bunch of reports that require formatting over 1000 tables. He couldn't find a way to do this in SPSS that wasn't hugely painful. After doing a bunch of googling this weekend, it looks to me like what he wants to do is doable in SPSS, but I can't figure out what the best way to go about doing it is. Here's what we need to do:
With the push of a button, produce a separate Word/PDF document for each state. Each state report contains 20 tables. The tables must have formatting comparable to what one could easily do in Word: control the font & font size and border thickness, and have row/column headers that span mult rows/columns. Being able to use drag-and-drop for setting up this formatting would be very nice. Most of the tables have a format like this: E A B C D F G B1 x x x x% x x% B2 x x x x% x x% B3 x x x x% x x% A 1 B1 x x x x% x x% Although he is currently using SPSS 19 (on Windows 7), we could definitely afford to upgrade to 20. He's got the custom tables module; if there are other modules that would make the formatting or automating much, much easier, we could afford to purchase them – he and other statisticians produce a number of reports where if we could reduce the amount of scutt work involved in formatting them, it would be well worth it. Also, I've used Python a lot, so for the automation part if Python is the way to go, I can certainly help them out. Any thoughts or pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Anders Schneiderman Database Services Manager American Speech Language Hearing Association aschneiderman@asha.org 301-296-8651 |
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Sorry, new to this list so I didn't get the table formatting right
Most of the tables have a format like this (plus some borderlines for headers): E A B C D F G B1 x x x x% x x% B2 x x x x% x x% B3 x x x x% x x% A 1 B1 x x x x% x x% |
Re: Best way to handle producing many, many tables with moderately complex formatting
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In reply to this post by AndersS
The devil is in the details, but there
are a lot of pain-reducing pieces around.
1) Statistics 20 has dramatically sped up the production of all kinds of tables (not just CTABLES output). Large volume output will really benefit from this. 2) It sounds like this is basically a SPLIT FILES application, but the Statistics SPLIT FILES implementation is limited to iterating within a single command. If that isn't enough here, consider the SPSSINC SPLIT FILES and SPSSINC PROCESS FILES extension commands that generalize the built-in split files to work with sets of syntax. They work together and generate file handles and macros that can be used to drive a syntax file repetitively, including the exporting. 3) The SPSSINC MODIFY OUTPUT and SPSSINC MODIFY TABLES extension commands can do much of the formatting work - you might want to write some custom plugins to extend them. Of course, you would want to start with a tableLook to do as much of the static formatting as possible. Or you could write custom scripts for this. Regards, Jon Peck (no "h") Senior Software Engineer, IBM [hidden email] new phone: 720-342-5621 From: AndersS <[hidden email]> To: [hidden email] Date: 11/14/2011 09:46 AM Subject: [SPSSX-L] Best way to handle producing many, many tables with moderately complex formatting Sent by: "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <[hidden email]> One of our statisticians needs to produce a bunch of reports that require formatting over 1000 tables. He couldn't find a way to do this in SPSS that wasn't hugely painful. After doing a bunch of googling this weekend, it looks to me like what he wants to do is doable in SPSS, but I can't figure out what the best way to go about doing it is. Here's what we need to do: With the push of a button, produce a separate Word/PDF document for each state. Each state report contains 20 tables. The tables must have formatting comparable to what one could easily do in Word: control the font & font size and border thickness, and have row/column headers that span mult rows/columns. Being able to use drag-and-drop for setting up this formatting would be very nice. Most of the tables have a format like this: E A B C D F G B1 x x x x% x x% B2 x x x x% x x% B3 x x x x% x x% A 1 B1 x x x x% x x% Although he is currently using SPSS 19 (on Windows 7), we could definitely afford to upgrade to 20. He's got the custom tables module; if there are other modules that would make the formatting or automating much, much easier, we could afford to purchase them – he and other statisticians produce a number of reports where if we could reduce the amount of scutt work involved in formatting them, it would be well worth it. Also, I've used Python a lot, so for the automation part if Python is the way to go, I can certainly help them out. Any thoughts or pointers in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Anders Schneiderman Database Services Manager American Speech Language Hearing Association [hidden email] 301-296-8651 -- View this message in context: http://spssx-discussion.1045642.n5.nabble.com/Best-way-to-handle-producing-many-many-tables-with-moderately-complex-formatting-tp4990923p4990923.html Sent from the SPSSX Discussion mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ===================== To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to [hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the command. To leave the list, send the command SIGNOFF SPSSX-L For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command INFO REFCARD |
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In reply to this post by AndersS
You may wish to contact the NSSE folks who produce a similar set of tables large scale. They output to Excel though to do the production and as Excel supports PDF it would meet your needs. ACT does a similar type of export but they go Excel to PowerPoint I believe. Dale Dale Pietrzak, Ed.D., LPC-MH, CCMHC Director, Office of Academic Evaluation & Assessment University of South Dakota 414 East Clark Street Vermillion, SD 57069 (605) 677-6497 |
Re: Best way to handle producing many, many tables with moderately complex formatting
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In reply to this post by AndersS
You really need to figure out the syntax necessary to create the specifics of each variant of table (build the basic within the GUI -if possible- then PASTE). Modify as necessary to build your set of 20 as a model and then drop some macro code or python code around that. Formatting? TABLE LOOKS?, MODIFY TABLES extension? Is this a one shot adventure or a recurring requirement?
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In reply to this post by AndersS
Thanks for the help!
Anders |
Re: Best way to handle producing many, many tables with moderately complex formatting
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In reply to this post by AndersS
You may need to create working variables if B is the total of B1, B2 and B3. Group these variables together as a multiple response set and make use of
the paste command from Ctables. You can also use the SPSS script to export the output to Excel first.
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From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of AndersS Sent: Monday, November 14, 2011 10:40 PM To: [hidden email] Subject: Re: Best way to handle producing many, many tables with moderately complex formatting Most of the tables have a format like this (plus some borderlines for headers):
E
A B C D F G
B1 x x x x% x x%
B2 x x x x% x x%
B3 x x x x% x x%
A 1 B1 x x x x% x x%
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