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Comparing Columns

See also: verifying data Double-checking your Data Entries (data verification)

Genstat allows you to compare two columns within a spreadsheet or across different spreadsheets. If any differences are found a warning message will inform you of this and a report of the differences will be generated in the Output window.

This feature is useful for comparing two columns to see what differences there are between them. For example, you could compare a newly calculated column with a column obtained from Excel to detect any discrepancies in the formulae used within Excel.

  1. From the menu select Spread | Column | Compare.

  2. Select the columns to compare using the Column dropdown lists.
    If you are comparing columns in different spreadsheets, use the Spreadsheet dropdown list to select the other sheet.
  3. Set other options as required then click OK to run the comparison.
    If differences are detected the following prompt will appear.

  4. Click OK to display the Output window and view the report.
    The numbers on either side of < > show the values in the mismatched columns.

Ignore case when comparing text Comparisons between text in the two spreadsheets will be made ignoring the case of the characters. For example, ‘GENSTAT’ and ‘Genstat’ would be matched.
Tolerance for numerical comparisons Specifies a tolerance to be used for numerical comparisons. When comparing two numerical items, if the absolute difference is less than this amount then this indicates a match between the items.
Abort comparison after finding N differences Specifies a limit for the number of differences to be detected before aborting.
Updated on December 14, 2018

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