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spss
Henrixx
Henrixx

Reputation: 11

Merge files in SPSS with both overlapping cases and variables

So, first off, I'm novice to spss and still use point and click, so bear with me.

The problem I'm having is that I have two datasets I want to merge, the two sets have one key variable in common with some overlapping cases and some overlapping variables.

  1. If I choose the data>merge>add cases - I'm left with a lot of duplicates and won't get the variables from both files.
  2. If I choose data>merge>add variables - the variables that are the same for both files is excluded, even though they are the same width etc. Hence, if I choose "both files provide cases", the variables that are the same for both files wont be included from the new file and will be left empty.

Am I doing something wrong or is this simply not possible? I've seen posts of this operation before and I thought it would be solved by the second method I tried, but no..

Any tips?

/Henrik

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1249

Answers (1)

JKP
JKP

Reputation: 5417

What do you want as the merge result? You will, of course, get only one instance of variables that have the same name per case unless you choose to rename the variable in one of the datasets. You can do the renaming by using the Rename button in the dialog.

Upvotes: 1

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