Creating and editing data sets

16

Excel or many other spreadsheets, word processors, database programs etc. We

recommend that you organise large data sets using a spreadsheet program such as

Excel as this will give access to a wide range of sorting and editing procedures to ease

your task.

The above table shows you how the data will look in Excel. Note both the order of the

variables and their type. The samples are arranged in columns. Each sample has a

title field. Start the first sample in column 2. The data consists of the number of

individuals observed in the sample. Put in zeros and make all the values integers. The

species names are input from row 2 in column 1. When using Excel use the Save as

function to save your data as a *.csv file. Ensure that the work sheet you are saving

only holds the tabulated data for analysis. If your data set has been created using the

convention that a blank cell means zero then use the find and replace function

available in all common spreadsheets to search for blanks and replace them with 0

(zero).

The data set above looks like this if viewed in a word processor program:

,Title1,Title2,Title3

Species1,21,1,5

Species2,15,5,0

Species3,0,7,0

Species4,1,9,0

Species5,0,0,8

Note the leading comma on the first row, which will make the first cell blank.

see also:

Demonstration data sets

Opening a data set

Data entry from within ECOM

4.3

Large data files

If you are planning to use large datasets with ECOM then you may find the PISCES

LIST COMBINER very useful indeed. Excel has a limit of 255 columns per worksheet.

LIST COMBINER will take all your worksheets and combine them all into one large csv

file (summing and sorting the values for each variable along the way) ready to load

directly into ECOM. See 

www.pisces conservation.com/softutils.html

 for more details.

4.4

Data entry from within ECOM

Data sets can be created and edited within ECOM. To create a new data set select

File| New from the pull down menus. A dialog window called Input Grid Variables will

open with which you specify the number of sites, species and environmental

variables. After you have entered the numbers, click on OK and the data grids will be

created for data entry.

Copyright 2004  PISCES Conservation Ltd