How to Copy and Paste an Attribute

Briefly

You can select one or more attributes in a case table and copy them. Then, you can select another case table and paste the attributes.

 

This can be very useful when you are combining data from more than one collection.

An example of copying an attribute from one collection to another

Suppose you have a collection whose cases are states and each case has the name and population of the state. Suppose you have a second collection whose cases are also states, but each case has name and number of traffic fatalities for different years. You would like to copy the populations from the first collection into the second. Fortunately, this is easy, provided both collections are in the same order, say alphabetized by state name.

  1. Select the population attribute in a case table of the first collection.

  2. Choose Copy Attribute from the Edit menu.

  3. In the second collection, select the attribute just to the right of the position you want for the population (or no attribute if you want it at the end of the list).

  4. Choose Paste Attribute from the Edit menu.