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Topic: re-organising survey data into more logical groupings

I have been using Recorder (v 6.17.2.251) in a quite basic way for a couple of years now, and over time have decided that some data is not organised in the best way.  But at the outset I had now idea how things might develop.

Unfortunately I bunged a whole lot of miscellaneous observations under an "Ad hoc 2012" survey label, but have decided that now I have so many records, and have collected records for unexpected family groups, I would be much better organised if some records were pulled out and placed under a heading of say "Beetles" or "Springtails", etc.  Yet some should still remain as truely "Ad hoc".

I am referring to this year's data - which I haven't as yet submitted to any national record centre.

Is there a simple way to to do this?  (if only it were as simple as "drag and drop"!)

Thanks
Nigel

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Re: re-organising survey data into more logical groupings

You can use drag and drop to move a survey event from one survey to another but only if you have custody of it and it ‘fits’ into the new survey, i.e. its date is within the allowed range for the new survey and its spatial reference is within the bounding box of the new survey, if it has one. It works well if you can see the event you are moving and the survey you are moving it to at the same time but the scrolling doesn’t work very well so it isn’t easy if you have to scroll to find the survey you want to move it to. It shouldn’t be too difficult to develop a batch update to do this. Does anyone have one?

The problem will be if your events contain some observations to go in one survey and some to go in another. In this case you will need to create new events and samples and move some of the observations to those then move the appropriate events. Will this be worth the effort? Reports will pick up observations across surveys unless told to do otherwise. It may be better to just organise all new data better.

Sally Rankin, JNCC Recorder Approved Expert
E-mail: s.rankin@btinternet.com
Telephone: 01491 578633
Mobile: 07941 207687

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Re: re-organising survey data into more logical groupings

Thanks for the advice, Sally.  I shall have to think carefully about that, and whether it's worth it.
But yes, for next year, I can plan better for it now that I can sort of see the future, and the best way forward.