Training

Do you often find yourself moving variables around in the SPSS data editor window or running reports, when all you want to do is compare a few variables or a few cases? If you do a quick calculation for a respondents age, for example, would you like to see the age column and the date of birth column next to each other?

The new split pane option in SPSS 13.0 enables you to split your data editor vertically and horizontally. With this option, you can freeze the first few variables or cases and fold the new values under those shown.

To split the screen horizontally (see Figure 1):

• Open any data editor window in SPSS
• Grab the slider located at the bottom of the vertical scroll bar, move the slider right, and drop it to the left of the last variable you want to freeze
• As you scroll to the left variable, the subsequent variables will fold under the two frozen variables

Figure 1: Screen with horizontal split

Figure 2: Screen with vertical split

Follow the same procedure to split the screen vertically (see Figure 2):

• Grab the slider located at the far right end of the top tool, move it toward the top of the screen, and drop it below the last case you want to freeze

To remove a split, go to the Window menu and choose “Remove splits.”

Figure 3: Remove splits