How to Merge Files by Case (Add New Cases)

Introduction

This article describes how to merge files by case.

In this example, two files census_05_men and census_05_women.sav were merged. Variables with the black box in the first column came from the demographics file and those on the second column from the attitudes files. Both files have a common variable called ID.

Requirements

• A professional user license.
• Files to be merged must be stored on the Displayr Cloud Drive
• Files to be merged must be .sav files

Method

File name specification

• Select Anything > Data > Data Set > Combine > by Case
• In Inputs > Data sets, type the name of the first file in the Data set 1 box
• In Inputs > Data sets, type the name of the second file in the Data set 2 box
• Type the name of the merged data set in the Combined data set name box. By default, it will be called Combined data set.sav
  
  For example:
  

  

Automatic variable matching

By default, the procedure uses Automatic Variable Matching. 

If you want more control over the matching process, uncheck Automatically determine what to match and choose from the following list of options:

Variables

Specify the names of the variables that should or should not be combined.  Also, the variables that should be manually included or omitted from the combined data set.

Names and Labels

When the labels or names for matching variables are not identical, you can either use the ones from the first data set or the last data set. Also, if there are multiple labels for the same value, you can either use the ones from the preferred data set or create new ones.

Automatic Updating

Use Automatic updating if you want the merge to refresh automatically after a specified time period.

Notes

You can review our technical documentation on the merge tool here.

See Also

How to Merge Files by Variable (Add New Variables)

How to Use the Displayr Cloud Drive