error message when opening .exf file

Discussions about tools to complement CSPro data processing
Forum rules
New release: CSPro 8.0
Post Reply
Anne
Posts: 104
Joined: January 11th, 2012, 12:55 am

error message when opening .exf file

Post by Anne »

I want to split a data set in two, and thought it was a good idea to use the export tool. What I want is two data files - both with the whole dictionary as the original file, but if myField = 1, I want it on one file, while if myField = 2, I want it in the other one.

So I made two .exf files choosing to export the whole dictionary, and setting the universe to decide what to export.

The problem is: If I double click on the .exf file - or the .pff file of the application, I get the warning message "CSPro export requires at least one case id to be chosen".

I find this weird, as I have selected all of the dictionary, ID elements included.

Why is this? And how do I avoid it?

Anne
khurshid.arshad
Posts: 571
Joined: July 9th, 2012, 11:32 am
Location: Islamabad, Pakistan

Re: error message when opening .exf file

Post by khurshid.arshad »

Dear Anne

If I understood your question correctly, you can select different fields as per your requirement during export data from left pane in CSExport window. Click + sign in left pane in CSExport window and you will see all your items.
a.
Anne
Posts: 104
Joined: January 11th, 2012, 12:55 am

Re: error message when opening .exf file

Post by Anne »

Dear Khurshid
Thank you, but you misunderstood ;)

What I need is to make an application to export the data to use in the productionRunner tool (This tool basically just runs through all .pff and .bat files you specify). So I have aldready made the application (the .exf file), and the pff file. And in the .exf file, I have already specified what fields I want and what universe, and amongst the fields I chose, all of the ID elements are included.

and the error occurs when I double click on the .pff file, but it shouldn't..

Anne
khurshid.arshad
Posts: 571
Joined: July 9th, 2012, 11:32 am
Location: Islamabad, Pakistan

Re: error message when opening .exf file

Post by khurshid.arshad »

Dear Anne

Can you share that what is the purpose of this exercise. Maybe it can useful for me as well.
a.
Anne
Posts: 104
Joined: January 11th, 2012, 12:55 am

Re: error message when opening .exf file

Post by Anne »

We have made this huge menu driven application for interviews at health facilities to be used by ministries of health in different countries, and it needs to be easy to manage the whole survey: The ministries should be able to add and delete questions, they should have as many interviewers as needed for that particular country, and basically almost no knowledge of CSPro should be necessary. The menu makes it possible to interview people at different departments of the health facility in random order.

This thing I'm working on now is the post interview processing of data: We need to merge the data from the different health facility departments, then we need to concatinate data from all the interviewers, separate the supervisor controlled data from the regular data etc. And productionRunner tool is great for this: You write the batch applications and the pff files for each task, and list then in the right order in the tool, then the survey managers in the different country can just double click on the productionRunner file to do all the tasks in one go.

But the export tool behaves weird.. In adition to my problem descrived above, it also seems to be confusing some paths.. When specifying file names in the pff file like this:

[Files]
Application=.\final_data2.exf
InputData=..\..\Data\Concatenated\1_SARA_RAWDATA.dat
ExportedData=..\..\Data\Concatenated\3_FINAL_DATA.dat
Listing=.\trash\final_data.exf.lst
CSProDescFile=.\trash\Exported.dcf

the Listing file and the CSProDescFile does not end up in the same directory, which is weird.. :(

Anne
khurshid.arshad
Posts: 571
Joined: July 9th, 2012, 11:32 am
Location: Islamabad, Pakistan

Re: error message when opening .exf file

Post by khurshid.arshad »

thankx.
a.
Gregory Martin
Posts: 1777
Joined: December 5th, 2011, 11:27 pm
Location: Washington, DC

Re: error message when opening .exf file

Post by Gregory Martin »

Anne,

Did Savy answer your question about the IDs over email?

In any case, I would suggest that you do this task using a batch application instead of an export application. We added a function setoutput in the most recent version, which you can use to change the output of your batch application. That way you also won't have to process the data file multiple times for each myField value. For example, you could write this:
setoutput(maketext(".\Split Files\myField%d.dat",myField));
tntn45
Posts: 1
Joined: March 17th, 2015, 1:26 am

Re: error message when opening .exf file

Post by tntn45 »

And productionRunner tool is great for this: You write the batch applications and the pff files for each task, and list then in the right order in the tool, then the survey managers in the different country can just double click on the productionRunner file to do all the tasks in one go.???
We offer guaranteed success for http://spanishprograms.com/ exam with help of latest certification spanishprograms - classes in spanish and practice questions and the exams of French Yabla ccie security German.about
Post Reply