CSPro Users Forum

Dear Josh

I am entering course evaluation data. each course may have 30-200 respondents. variables with values which repeats are course-code (alpha) and Course title (alpha). I want to set a means to recall last entered value to help data entrants to just select and avoid typing similar texts (excel can do refill by recalling past values) but also to provide room to write new texts when particular course has been completed.

You can try to set the variable property to persistent.
Persistent fields are fields that take the value from the previous case in the data file as their default and they are typically used for fields that change very rarely from one case to another. When you want to change the fields, then you can use the special key (F7) to change the value.

The variables are not in ID record hence persistent does not work.

If each course has a unique course code and a unique course name, I would suggest not to use two, but only one variable. In the value set of that variable you can define the codes AND the names. That saves a lot of typing.
That one variable can then be added to the ID record - even if you don't really need it there - and made persistent.

Thanks for your advise
There are about 660 courses to be evaluated by approximately 30,000 students. You can imagine to code all those courses in value sets

I agree that it is a lot of work. Don't you have the complete list? It can be copied from e.g. Excel directly to a value set in CSPro.
It would save a lot of work during data entry.

You could use a lookup file and the selcase function to display all course titles that start with a particular sequence of letters. See the example "Computer Assisted Coding" in the CSPro examples directory.

If you want to do something like Excel you could store all previous entries in a lookup file then add an OnKey function in which you lookup the value entered so far in the lookup file and fill it in if you find a match. I'm not sure how well it would work in practice. It might get in the way if you are typing fast. There isn't a way to have an unobtrusive popup in CSPro like in Excel.

If I were you though I would probably use a value set if I could. Then you could have them use the search function (little magnifying glass) to search for the course title in the value set.

In addition to the other suggestions, you could:

• Create a lookup file with the entered data and then update it as new entries are added. You could use the selcase function to display entries in that file.
• Use the loadsetting/savesetting functions if you simply want to recall the last entered value.