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Forum → How Do I... & Other Questions → Abundances always having 'count' next to them in excel
Is there any way of stopping Recorder from putting 'Count' next to every abundance number when exporting a report to excel? I know this can be done by manipulation in excel afterwards but can is it possible to prevent excel from doing this in the first place?
Thank you!
It's not excel doing it, it is the standard format for abundances output from Recorder. There isn't an easy way of getting rid of it, but it could be done by someone who knew what they were doing. It would need a modification to the function which produces the concatenated string of abundances & an addition to the various REPORT tables.
Probably not a task for a beginner then.
Thanks for replying, I realise it's not excel doing it, is there really no way of just having raw numbers extracted from Recorder reports?
Seems odd that the only way to get the basic information is by such complicated means?
It's a complicated database. Has to be I guess as it needs to be able to hold many different kinds of abundance data and a given record may have multiple abundances. The problem with creating a simplified version would be that when it came across a record with more than just a simple number against it it would not know what to do and would probably return just the first number it found.
True, but it would be useful if it could provide both formats so that data analysis can be done more easily in excel
Unfortunately I'm not looking at R6 but I thought there was a field which exported count number only?
Aren't units broken down under the measures option?
Abundance can be reported on in two ways. Either through Abundance/ Measurements or Via Occurrences / Obs Abundances LC . With measurements you select specific Abundance qualifiers (eg None, adult) and get one column for each one selected. The output shows the data and the unit (eg, 1 Count)
With Obs Abundances Lc, you get just one column with all abundances concatenated into one string. This shows the data/qualifier and unit for each abundance entry, but there is some additional formatting which removes unnecessary qualifiers ( eg 1 Count rather than 1 None Count).
The output isn't that meaningful if you don't know what the units are, however, I can see that if a system which uses just the
simplest form of abundance entry (eg with data, qualifier = None and unit = Count) then having the unit in the output is unnecessary.
If I understand the requirement correctly I can provide a new Report Wizard attribute (called say Abundance Data) which will just return the contents of the data field for abundances. In the simplest implementation of this, it will return multiple lines if there is more than one abundance on the record. I just need to be sure that I understand the requirement before doing any work.
Thanks Mike, I think this would be very useful especially when working with data in a particular Survey that has used a standard survey method.
We would also find the option to express the abundance data without the units. We had the interesting situation of original abundance data entered as "1 count" appearing on our reports as "1 count of count".
We had the interesting situation of original abundance data entered as "1 count" appearing on our reports as "1 count of count".
We do get similar but doesn't that just show that the data has been entered incorrectly.
In the end though this is where Recorder 6 went wrong. Recorder 2000 had a more straightforward abundance and seperate sex/stage attribute. The way it is done now means that getting data in is harder and the way it comes out means there's a lot of work to do to make data sensible and useable. There might be good reasons for this but it makes things very messy and it opens the door for counts of count, presence of present and a whole myriad of wierdness.
It will be fairly easy to modify reporting so the output makes sense. It is a question of identifying exactly what is required. I haven't progressed this as at the moment as the contract for Recorder support in 2015/2016 has not yet been agreed, although there are proposals being discussed.
Hi Mike,
I am just wondering when we can expect to see new Report Wizard attribute (called say Abundance Data).
If you have the ability to run SQL (ie. you have access to Management Studio) the attached SQL will add two new Report Wizard options. One which just reports on the Abundance data. This is suitable if you just record Abundances as a count with no qualifier. The other which reports Abundance with the just the data and qualifier and no units. I have also changed the existing Abundance output so that it will not display the qualifier if it is the same as the units, which will also resolve the '1 count of count' situation. The aim will be to include these changes in 6.26 which is in the final stages of testing.
Incidentally, 'Count' is not a system supplied R6 qualifier, therefore, they must have been input as a new term or come from a Recorder 3.3 or other import.
Forum → How Do I... & Other Questions → Abundances always having 'count' next to them in excel
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