Copy and Paste Data from Another Program

There are several ways of getting data from other programs or from a Web site into Fathom. The one most familiar to most people is to copy the data and paste it into a Fathom collection.

1. Open the file with your data in its current program.

Your data need to be arranged correctly: columns represent attributes (or variables); each row is a case (or record). It’s best if the first row consists of the attribute names, as in this image.

2. Copy the data (including the attribute names).

3. Switch to Fathom.

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In Fathom, a data set is stored in a collection, so you need to make a collection to hold the copied data.

4. Create an empty collection by dragging one from the shelf and dropping it in the document.

5. With the collection selected, choose Paste Cases from the Edit menu.

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It’s a good idea to see if the data came in the way you intended. Check this by using a case table.

6. Drag a new case table from the shelf.

If your data didn’t come in perfectly, you might need to fix things (for example, give the attributes better names or delete a bogus case).

If what you got is too much trouble to fix, you might make the data conform to Fathom’s structure (as in the screen shot above) in its current program and try again. Or you could try importing it, rather than copy/paste. See Import Data from a Text File or Import Data from the Internet for more detail.