UNCLE PROFESSIONAL 2012 and UNCLE STANDARD 2012 release w06's new features include the following:
EXCEL RUN Option’s New FLEX Keyword:
The most exciting new feature in release w06 is the inclusion of the FLEX keyword with the EXCEL Run Option. Use of the FLEX keyword results in an actionable Excel workbook that enables the display or suppression of user-selected row types and data columns with a few simple clicks. This form of the worksheet facilitates the copying of user-selected row types (e.g. percents only) to new worksheets or other software programs, for charting and graphing, or for printing only the displayed results.
This form of the workbook defaults to the Print View, which is identical to the workbook worksheet(s) resulting from the standard EXCEL Run Request. By selecting Flex View on the Uncle ribbon, the workbook shifts to the FLEX view. Click on Show/Hide Rows and a dialog appears with checkboxes for the row types to be displayed. Once your selections are made, click on OK and the unchecked row types are hidden from view and disabled from further access. Select any columns to be hidden from view and then check Hide Columns on the Uncle ribbon. Only the displayed row types and columns will now be accessed for printing, copying, or for use in charts and graphs. Linked charts and graphs may be pasted into Microsoft® PowerPoint® as modifiable objects, and not as pictures.
Click on Check All in the dialog (and Unhide Cols if appropriate) to return the worksheet to its original state. Selections made for any given worksheet will be applied to all worksheets.
Here’s a worksheet resulting from the FLEX keyword in its initial, Print View state:
The Uncle ribbon allows you to switch back and forth between the Print View and the Flex View. In the Flex View you have options for hiding columns from view, altering the number of percentage decimals displayed, switching percents to decimal fractions (e.g. 1.0 vs. 100.0%), and opening the Show/Hide Rows dialog.
The Show/Hide Rows dialog has entries for each of the active worksheet’s row elements. By checking only those entries you want displayed, all other row elements will be hidden from view.
Depending on a worksheet’s elements, other choices may include: independent and dependent significance and t-tests; horizontal percents; cumulative vertical or horizontal percents; auxiliary percents; the various INDEX, RINDEX, and CINDEX options; vertical and horizontal rank numbers; NULL rows; and others.
Here’s the same worksheet in the Flex View after the above row types have been selected and applied. All row types are now hidden except for table and column titles, base row frequencies, statistic frequencies, and percents only for the other rows:
Select a subset of the displayed cells and click on Copy Visible Rows…
and only the visible selection will be copied to the clipboard; all hidden cells are suppressed. Create a graph from the selection and copy it into PowerPoint® as a modifiable object.
NOTE: Use of the FLEX keyword requires that the UncleAddin be installed. For end-users who do not have UNCLE PROFESSIONAL or UNCLE STANDARD installed on their PCs, the UncleAddin must be downloaded from the Home page of our web site and installed before accessing the Excel workbook created with the FLEX keyword. Otherwise the worksheets therein will lose all of the FLEX capabilities and appear solely as last saved by the preparer.
Other EXCEL Run Option Enhancements:
Freeze Rows and Columns for Printing: Printing of Excel worksheets that are more than a page in width now repeat the row labels on subsequent pages, and worksheets more than a page in length now repeat the column labels on subsequent pages.
FONTSIZE Keyword: Implemented to change the point size from the default of 11. Point size may be fractional (e.g. 14.5).
FONTNAME Keyword: Implemented to change the font type to any other installed font.
NOPR Column Option: Enhanced to suppress columns from worksheet output.
NISKP and NOBAN Table Options: Enhanced to function in worksheets. NISKP will only function when used in conjunction with the COMBINE keyword.
Title Control Words That Work With EXCEL Run Option:
The following new or enhanced Title Control Words will impact the text output to Excel headers (from UNCLE’s Project Title) and footers (from UNCLE’s F-lines). Excel headers and footers have three sections, so these Title Control Words must be repeated for each section in which they are to be applied.
&SH Title Control Word: &SH is replaced by the current worksheet’s label.
&IT Title Control Word: Causes the following text to be italicized.
&BO/&BE Title Control Words: Enhanced to turn on and off the bolding of the text.
Options:
BASEROW Row Option: Defines a table’s row(s) as base rows for use with the new EXCEL FLEX output.
BORDER Table Option: When used in conjunction with the WORD or WORDALT options, will draw a frame around the outside border of the table.
BDR Column/Row Option: When used in conjunction with the WORD or WORDALT options, draws vertical lines to the left and/or right of the table cells for a column, and above and/or below the table cells for a row.
BLANK Table Option: The BLANK table option is used to alter the contents of one or more of a table’s cells. The specified cells may be forced to be blank, or a character or string of characters may be inserted into the cells. Any frequencies, percents, or any other symbols or character strings that would have otherwise printed in these cells will be eliminated. The effects of ZCELL, ZPCELL, ZPACELL, and SZRFILL will be overridden by the BLANK option.
Database and Data Management Requests:
CODES Data Management Request: The CODES request facilitates the importation of coded responses from an external delimited ASCII file. The user provides the name of the delimited file, the location of the case id, the variable(s) to import, and the starting position of an open field in the D-file for storing the incoming data, along with some other optional information. Multiple responses may be stored in the incoming file as individual codes in a series of variables, or a string of codes in a single variable. When finished, the request returns a summary report that itemizes where each variable is stored.
Subsets of the D-file’s cases may be imported using the CODES request, with only the matched cases updated with the incoming data. Any data previously existing in the specified data field will be overridden by the incoming data.
The CODES request may be used to import any alpha and/or numeric data string, with options for the appropriate justification of the new data field.
The IDs of any cases in the external delimited file that do not have a match in the D-file may optionally be listed with the inclusion of the LIST keyword.
GETSPSS Data Management Request: This request has been enhanced with several options dictating the size of the data fields in the resultant ASCII data file. Please note that the default has changed.
WIDTH Value: By default, data field width will be determined by the SPSS .sav file’s Width value. If any data value exceeds the Width value, an error report will be produced showing the number of problematic data items for each variable. The data Width may be redefined in the .sav file, or the problem data items altered.
OVERRIDE Keyword: Functions with the default, increasing the data field size from the Width value as needed for any variable with one or more data items in excess of that variable’s Width value.
DATAWIDTH Keyword: Creates data fields in the ASCII output based on the size of each variable’s greatest value or longest text string. This was the former default in release w05.
OWIDTH: Unchanged from the previous release; uses the SPSS .sav file’s Columns data-view display value to determine the size of each data field in the ASCII file output.
LOAD Data Management Request and Dialog: This request and dialog have been enhanced to accommodate the direct importation of delimited ASCII data files. The external delimited file and its delimiters are provided along with various options for header records and justification of data fields. An interim fixed-position C-file is created along with a report detailing variable numbers and names, the data field each is assigned to, and other detailed info regarding the number of hits for each, variables empty for all cases, and so on. The DATA statement is altered to the new record length, and the new data loaded into the UNCLE D-file. The interim C-file is retained for future reference.
This enhancement eliminates the previous necessity of independently handling the conversion and expansion to a fixed-position ASCII data file using our USort utility’s Expand Delimiters option.SPSS Data Management Request: The SPSS request that facilitates the creation of labeled SPSS .sav files from the UNCLE database and Table Library has been expanded to function in UNCLE STANDARD. This request was previously available only in UNCLE PROFESSIONAL.
MAKEcase Data Management Request: Used to convert any text characters found in the specified field to all uppercase or lowercase characters.
JUSTIFY Data Management Request: Enhanced with UPPER keyword to change the case of any text characters to uppercase.
Additional Enhancements:
Request Prompt Insert/Overstrike Mode: When overstrike mode is set on at the request prompt it will remain set on for subsequent request prompts until reset to insert mode.
STAT Request with Weighted Samples: The STAT report now has an additional entry that indicates whether or not the project’s D-file cases have an associated weight factor created by either the WEIGHT or CWEIGHT requests.
and many more features.