problem with excel2cspro

[sylvain]

hello,

I am new to CS Pro, so maybe this is obvious, here is my problem :
I want to develop a data entry application in order to numerise the result of a paper survey. During the data entry, person who are going to do this need to see the values from previous survey (not handle in cspro). So I figured I had to use what is called "lookup data", and in order to do this, I :
- created a dictionnary mapping my lookup data
- put my data in .xls
- tried to use excel2cspro, using, the xls file, the dcf file, and a new file for the data. When I click on convert, it crashes (excel2cspro stopped working...).

So here is my question :
- am I doing the right thing ? (and is the choice of cs pro judicious, it's a small survey, 5 pages questionnaire ?)
- do you see why it crashes ?

Enclosed is my dcf and my xls.

[Saint]

Hi Sylvain,
Want to assist, but not sure I understand your question fully. Are you designing a CAPI program, or a program to capture data already collected on paper?
In in case, the look-up dictionary should be connected to the main data entry program. If you can provide a bit more detail and the entire program, I can provide a bit more help.

[josh]

Using a lookup file to load in the data from the previous is a good approach. Many other users have done the same.

I'm not sure why excel2cspro is crashing for you. I ran it on your dictionary and your spreadsheet and it worked fine (output file is attached). I just used all the default settings in cspro2excel. Did you use a different setting?

excel2csprosettings.PNG (76.84 KiB) Viewed 6710 times

Which version of CSPro are you using? Which version of Windows and which version of Microsoft Office are you using?

[sylvain]

hello,

@Saint : I am designing only a program to capture data already collected on paper, and during the process of capturing, I need the program to show data from previous survey. I can't provide the entire program because it's not written yest . I am still exploring, and want to be sure CS Pro is the right tool to do what I want to do.

@josh : wow... I have a problem here... I tried it first on CS Pro 6.1, then tried 6.2 then again 6.1, each time with the same settings you used... everytime with the same result. What could be the problem with my computer ? Is it possible I lack some library ? Is there a log somewhere that could help us understand what happened ?

[josh]

What version of Windows are using and what version of Microsoft Office?

[sylvain]

I am using windows seven and office 2000 (we have just migrated to libreoffice, office is still installed but we are supposed not to use it any more)

[josh]

You may need to use a more recent version of Microsoft Office. Excel2CSPro uses Microsoft Office and we have never tested with Office 2000. We don't have any machines with a version that old. It has been tested with Office 2010 and above.

[sylvain]

ok thank you for your answer.

It's gonna be difficult for me to get this at work, and I don't have office at home, is there anothere quick way to transform data from a standardized format ? (csv for instance ?)

[josh]

You can replicate what Excel2CSPro does by generating a fixed width text file. You can do this in all versions of Excel (including Office 2000) by saving your spreadsheet as "Formatted space delimited text (.prn)". I'm not sure if this is possible in LibreOffice but it may be. Before you save the spreadsheet in this format make sure that the order of the columns in the spreadsheet match the order of the variables in the dictionary and most importantly that the column widths in the spreadsheet match the lengths of the variables in the dictionary. If they are off by even one character then it won't work when you load the data in CSPro. In Excel you can right click on each column header and set the column width to match the length in the dictionary. Also, in the data dictionary set the length of the record type to zero since your spreadsheet won't have a record type otherwise all the start positions will be off by one.

[Gregory Martin]

Sylvain, for an illustration of what Josh is talking about, see this:

http://www.csprousers.org/help/html/imp ... format.htm