Paste Data into a Collection

How To... > Work with Collections > Get Data into Fathom > Paste Data into a Collection

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Fathom allows you to paste cases you’ve copied from somewhere else into a collection. For this to work, 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 valid attribute names, which begin with a letter or underscore, and include nothing but letters, underscores, and numbers (no spaces or other characters, such as percent signs). If the data you want aren’t at all as described, pasting might not work; try exporting and importing instead.

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

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

3.	Switch to Fathom.

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

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4.	Create an empty collection by dragging one from the shelf.

5.	With the collection selected, choose Edit \| Paste Cases.

You might want to look at the data in a case table to make sure all is well.

You might need to rename the attributes (double-click to edit or see Rename an Attribute in a Case Table).

If this method of getting data doesn’t work, maybe you could Import Data from a Text File instead, or consider pasting your data into a word processor or spreadsheet where you can prepare the collection to be copied. If the data is on a Web page, you could Import Data from the Internet by dropping the URL from your browser into Fathom.