Merge Datasets

[Brock-15]

Hi Everyone,

I figured it would be better to ask my question before trying something
crazy.  I have access to data files every year (they are from a third party
and I have zero say as to how they are setup).

What I want to do is "Add cases."  The trick is that every year, certain
fields are missing or added.  I simply want to build a master data file and
want to retain the fields if they were ever in a file and add all the cases.

Is this possible?  I believe I will get an error if I try to append cases
when the field does not exist, is missing a field, etc.

Thanks,

Brock

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[Garry Gelade]

It should work just fine. New fields will be created as required, and will
be set to system missing on those cases where they did not not exist.

Garry Gelade

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of
Brock
Sent: 15 June 2009 15:00
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Merge Datasets

Hi Everyone,

I figured it would be better to ask my question before trying something
crazy.  I have access to data files every year (they are from a third party
and I have zero say as to how they are setup).

What I want to do is "Add cases."  The trick is that every year, certain
fields are missing or added.  I simply want to build a master data file and
want to retain the fields if they were ever in a file and add all the cases.

Is this possible?  I believe I will get an error if I try to append cases
when the field does not exist, is missing a field, etc.

Thanks,

Brock

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command. To leave the list, send the command SIGNOFF SPSSX-L For a list of
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[Brock-15]

Thanks for the help!  Maybe it was past versions, but for some reason I
didn't think that it would add the variables.  That is perfect!

I did get an error that I need to look into, but otherwise it appears to
have worked.

- Brock

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