Someone sent me a list of IDs (apatkey)for participants registered in our
databank. They sent an Excel file (alas). I pasted it into Stata and later
used StatTransfer, both with the same result.
What I did was to save the IDs sent to me. Then I -used- my databank and
merged the new data in. The problem was that the merge didn't work as
people with the same apatkey didn't merge. Tracing this down, I found that
the length of the merged variable was different from the master variable.
It would seem that there are hidden characters in the case where _merge == 2.
Questions. Does anyone know how to see those hidden characters? Is this a
known problem with the hated Excel?
. replace apatkey=trim(apatkey)
. l apat greger _merge length if index(apatkey, "CLE210928")
+-----------------------------------------+
| apatkey greger _merge length |
|-----------------------------------------|
28469. | CLE210928 . 1 9 |
74437. | CLE210928 1 2 12 |
+-----------------------------------------+
Thanks,
Fred
Fred Wolfe
National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases
Wichita, Kansas
Tel +1 316 263 2125
[email protected]
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