MS Excel problem...

[bryce]

If you just want to enter numbers without Excel autoformatting them for you type ' before the number

i.e. '12-13.

When you press Enter, the ' will disappear and the numbers will remain. Magic.

 

[Arch]

All sorted now folks, thanks for all the help! I'll have loads of ideas if it happens again! (although now I know, I should be able to prepare better...)

Now, could anyone write my PhD for me?

 

[marinyork]

All sorted now folks, thanks for all the help! I'll have loads of ideas if it happens again! (although now I know, I should be able to prepare better...)

Now, could anyone write my PhD for me?

Sure, does it involve any maths ?

 

[Arch]

Sure, does it involve any maths ?

Sort of. Lots of comparison of measurements...

You've got a year...

 

[Wolf04]

Cheers all. I'm tied up today teaching (well, teaching for an hour at lunchtime, but as it's a bunch of 16 year olds, my colleagues and I intend to spend the afternoon in the pub), but I'll print this thread out and try it all tomorrow...

Annoying thing is, I've already done a load of copying - ideally, I'd want a way to convert what's already there. (the blip wasn't apparent on the first few documents...)

Bloody computers. Still, without them, my project would take about 100 years, with slide rules and abaci....

I use to really like slide rules. Not sure I would know which end is which now but back in the day before calculators and PCs they were the biz. I'll just wander off with my Audax Zimmer frame now.

 

[Kirstie]

I only just saw this thread, but feel the need to respond as I've been bone idle all day and this vaguely relates to work. I've used SPSS since the early 90s ... then there was a thing called a 'command file' you had to write, oh my lord what a nightmare that was....but if you ever come across a problem like this again, this is what I would do.

IMO it all depends how you code the data before you put it into SPSS. I would numerically code the different categories of century, so instead of putting 12 - 13th in your variable column, enter a number which equates to that category. 12th - 13th = 1; 14th - 15th = 2 etc etc. So then you could export a numerical rather than a string variable. The only thing is that you need to make sure you are consistent with the categories. In this case they would all have to be 2 century spans so you could read it back from SPSS or Excel.

 

[Arch]

IMO it all depends how you code the data before you put it into SPSS. I would numerically code the different categories of century, so instead of putting 12 - 13th in your variable column, enter a number which equates to that category. 12th - 13th = 1; 14th - 15th = 2 etc etc. So then you could export a numerical rather than a string variable. The only thing is that you need to make sure you are consistent with the categories. In this case they would all have to be 2 century spans so you could read it back from SPSS or Excel.

Yes, with hindsight I could have done stuff better - it all goes right back to when I designed my Access database - god, that's 4 years ago!

The century thing is tricky, because some of the phases are very short - ie only part of one century, but thanks to the sometimes vague nature of archeological data, some phases cover more than one, or even more than 2 centuries. In some cases the best that can be said is 'Saxon' or 'pre-conquest', which covers anything from about 400 to 1066!

 

[Kirstie]

Well as long as the categories themselves are valid you can attach whatever code to them you like!