Data Management Pointers

Data management is more than just creating elegant databases with cascading updates and referential integrity and all that. Sometimes it's just grunt work -- like figuring out where to stuff all the reports so you can find them when you need them.

Contents

Getting Hep on HIPAA Do you do medical/health care research? You must understand how the Privacy Rule affects how you manage data (3/20/03)
Data Archival, or, Can I Throw This Out? How long should you save research data and programs? Do you still need them? Says who? (2/5/03)
Filing in a Nutshell: My short tutorial on filing electronic and paper files, plus creating a Data Management Notebook (7/25/02)
Research Data Management Do's & Don'ts My top ten (or more!) tips on working with research data, coping with software upgrades, designing databases ...

Managing Research Data: A Decade's Do's and Don'ts Slides from my 11/29/01 presentation to the Health Informatics seminar at U of MN

Microsoft Access Issues Includes support sites, patches, and upgrading problems between 97 and 2000 (10/31/01)
"Must Enter Password" when trying to open Excel or Access file
SPSS Tips Syntax help & links to other resources
Back to Carol's Home Page

Help! My data is being held hostage by Access!

Or Excel, or any of numerous helpful packages where it's supposed to be easy to shuffle data between files. Importing data files from Package ABC into SPSS is getting easier, but with each new version, SPSS (and Access and Excel and ...) introduce new wrinkles.

Quick Tip: If the "right" way of importing data into SPSS doesn't work, try saving your data file as an Excel Spreadsheet and then try to open it in SPSS. If that doesn't work, try saving your file as a text file (either comma-separated aka "delimited" or as a tab-delimited file) and give that a shot. Sure, it sounds "dumb" to use 3 packages just to get your survey into the computer, but when you encounter baffling error messages (ie the data capture utility says "Table ABC has no fields and will not be displayed" after you've entered 2000 records -- most distressing!) but sometimes the roundabout method is faster than trying to deal with the bug/"feature" the correct way.

Microsoft Access Issues

Support sites Web pages, newsgroups
Access 2000 Patches & Quirks
Upgrading from 97 to 2000, or, How to Install Access 97 and Access 2000 on Same Computer Before you convert an Access 97 database to Access 2000, read this!

Access 2000 Patches & Quirks

Oh, joy, while creating a "simple" data entry screen with Access 2000 I noticed the screen quit updating after a while and finally the message "There isn't enough free memory ..." only NOTHING else is running, plus Access failed to release the memory when I exited Access. This is one of a number of bugs in 2000 (see article for a simple fix involving the background graphics) which can be corrected by loading the Microsoft Office Service Release SR-1/SR-1a . There's also another set of patches, so you may want to just call for the CD-ROM rather than

Support Sites

Have questions about Access? Try the Microsoft support pages for Access , or the newsgroups comp.database.ms-access , comp.databases.ms-access , microsoft.public.access.conversion (if you're having headaches upgrading from 97 to 2000, or between other versions). (The links take you to the Google site (the old DejaNews) and allows you to either browse or search through the newsgroups.

Upgrading from 97 to 2000, or, How to Install Access 97 and Access 2000 on Same Computer

CAUTION!! If you have a database in Access 97, be very careful before deciding to convert it to Access 2000. Make a complete backup before testing the conversion process. I have a multi-year database with not-very-exotic features (like error-checking) that caused Access to crash repeatedly once converted to 2000. The wizards failed, the error messages from the database design itself never popped up, the menu didn't work, etc etc. Yeowch! You can enter data into a non-converted Access 97 file using 2000, but can't make changes to the database objects themselves (ie the data table design, forms, macros, etc) without converting. Ack, so I reload Access 97 until I can figure out what's haywire.

Check the Microsoft tech article on how to load both versions. However, nothing is ever so tidy as they explain things.

If you're loading Access 97 back onto your machine where you already have Access 2000, you may have to adjust their instructions. Actually, if you're doing the reverse, this may be illustrative as well. Here's my 2+ hour tale of woe (but there IS a happy ending):

Find & rename Hatten.ttf: The presence of this font kicks of a "Microsoft Access can't start because there is no license for it on this machine" error message, so you must temporarily rename it. For some bizzrare reason, File Find did NOT ever search through the C;\Windows\Fonts> folder. In addition, so long as the file was in the Fonts folder, I could not rename it. I moved the file to a C:\Temp> folder then renamed as directed to "Hatten.sav".
Rename MSACCESS.EXE to MSACCESS.2k: Oh, good, an easy step that worked!
Install Access 97/Office 97 to custom folder: As in when it prompts you to select a directory, put Access 97 into a new folder. Whoops! "Install" was not an option when I fired up the SETUP.EXE on the Access 97 CD, but something like, mmm, Reinstall/Repair was. Oh, bleep! Because SETUP found some portion of files on the disc, it did not recognize this as a fresh install. Consequently, the Change Directory prompt never appear, and SETUP merrily wiped out my Access 2000 installation.
Reinstall Access 2000: Toss in my Office 2000 upgrade disc, which said it could Reinstall/Repair, ?Add new features (like customizing the Office Annoyance, er, Assistant). No option for JUST installing Access 2000 alone. <STATION BREAK WHILE OFFICE 2000 RELOADS>
Redo steps 1 and 2
Rename the Microsoft Office folder to Office2000: Maybe not a smart move, but somehow I need to trick Access 97's setup routine into thinking this is a new install
Install Access 97: This time I was able to specify a non-Office 2000 folder to install Access 97 (if you do this, make sure you have the installation codes from the back of the CD holder). Put on D drive in "Access 97" folder.
Delete Extra Copy of Office 2000: Oh, my ... when I tried to fire up Access 2000 Friday, the Office 2000 setup wizard kept "configuring" my software. As in apparently loading a new set into a new "Microsoft Office" folder. Evidently it wasn't happy with my renaming of the folder to Office 2000. Delete extra set of files, then rename the Office2000 folder back to "Microsoft Office". The reloads put a fresh copy of Hatten.ttf into the fonts folder, so don't need (it seems ...) the original version. NOW everything works.

Elapsed time well over 2 hours. I'd try renaming the "Microsoft Office" folder to something new before attempting to load Access 97. BUT before firing up Access 2000, or any other Office 2000 product, be sure and rename the folder back to "Microsoft Office". [Posted 3/5/2001]

Importing Data from Access or Excel (6/19/02 update)

Do you use the Data Capture feature to grab data from Access (or Excel)? When (if) you upgrade to SPSS 10.X, be prepared for an unexpected "must enter password" or can't run GET or similar error message. You must tweek your system to allow yourself access to each and every database you use. Annoying, but oh well. Check out SPSS Answer Net Solution ID #100007698 for how to set up your ODBC Administrator. Substitute "Access" for "Excel" in the text.

OR, even better, check out the Data Export/Import portion Raynald Levesque's homepage and select Import from ACCESS or LotusNotes.SPS. This method (suggested by Tom Diericks) is the one he prefers, and does not require the definition of a DSN.

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Last updated March 20, 2003. Updated sporadically. / calbright@visi.com