User`s guide

E-Prime User’s Guide
Chapter 5: Data Handling
Page 189
the experiment Administrator has placed security restrictions on the file and has set the cells as
read-only.
Like other popular spreadsheet applications, E-DataAid provides common commands, such as
Find, Replace, Fill Down, Copy, and Paste, to make the chore of editing many cells easier. Since
these commands are not unique to E-DataAid, time is not spent describing them here. However,
these commands are documented in the E-DataAid Online Help and the E-DataAid Reference
Guide.
All edits to a cell appear in red, and for each edit, E-DataAid writes an annotation to the file. Even
if done within a group operation, such as Replace All, E-DataAid will write an individual
annotation to the file for each edited cell within the operation. For example, if a Replace All
operation edits three cells, E-DataAid will write three annotations to the file – one for each edit.
While this type of record keeping is necessary for a complete history of modifications, the number
of annotations can quickly become very large, depending on the number of edits made to a file.
To make the list of annotations more readable, refer to section 5.3.3.2 Annotations for information
concerning filtering the annotations list.
5.3.4.2 Delete Data
In E-DataAid, a cell or group of cells is deleted by using E-DataAid’s Delete command on the Edit
menu. Cells with deleted data or no data are marked as NULL.
E-DataAid requires the use of the Delete command to delete data. When data is deleted, the
edits appear in red, and E-DataAid writes an annotation to the file for each deletion. This is to
distinguish deleted data from the empty string (i.e., it is not uncommon for an experiment to use
the empty string as one of its exemplars).
By design, E-DataAid does not allow the deletion of rows or columns of data. To remove
columns or rows from the display, columns may be hidden, and rows may be filtered (refer to
section 5.3.2 Reduce the Data Set for more information). If reduction of the data set is not
adequate, the spreadsheet can be exported as an E-Prime text file using E-DataAid’s Export
command. Once exported, the text file can be modified in another application and re-imported
using E-DataAid’s Import command. Refer to Chapter 5 E-DataAid in the E-Prime Reference
Guide for information concerning importing files into E-Prime.
5.3.4.3 Rename a Variable
At some point, it may be necessary to change a variable’s name in the data file. To rename a
variable, select the column containing the variable and use E-DataAid’s Rename Variable
command on the Edit menu to display the Rename Variable dialog.