Question

Merging files in spss

Hi,
I have a problem in merging files. Here’s what I need to do: I have chosen 200 cases from 7000 in ArcMap (GIS-program). In the process I have lost some of the cases’ variable information.

Now I would like to get the variables back to my smaller dataset, and I used data-> merge files > add variables, and ID as match, match cases on > keyvariables in sorted files > both files provide cases.

This gave a dataset of all the 7000 cases, only the variables already existed in the first table didn’t add to the merged dataset. I tried also all different choises, but none of them gave me the result I wanted. This would be the 200 cases added with the variables that were lost in the process.

So in a nutshell how do I merge/replace the info from variables A (dataset) to variables B(dataset) without extra cases´ from A (only the info of the selected 200 cases´out of 7000)?

Answer 1

Out of hand:
Create a new variable in the reduced DataSet with the Value of 1.
Match the files.
Sort by the new variable.
Delete all cases who don’t have the value 1 on this variable.