Exporting Crosstabs

Panorama X
1

Panorama 6 allowed you to export crosstab tables as txt files to use in other applications, e.g. Excel. The crosstab export function in PanoramaX exports the entire database, not the table. Is there a work-around for this issue?

2

That’s not true. Maybe you are not using the correct commands.

You export the Crosstab data to a new database via a menu command from the Crosstab Table & Chart window.

Read about it in the documentation.

You could also use the crosstab( function to save a tab-separated crosstab to a variable.

3

Thanks KJM. I got into the documentation and was reminded of the old British expression, “Using the Woolich Arsenal steam hammer to crack a walnut!” I love Panorama 6 for that reason: One step exporting from a crosstab to a txt file. No fuss, no muss. Sorry, but I started with OverVue in the early 80’s and never became a power user. All the later incarnations retained its user-friendly simplicity. PanoramaX broke that pattern and I’m beginning to feel some buyer’s remorse. (Sorry Jim…)

4

I beg to disagree — and I am a user since the days of OverVUE, too: Jim delivers you a perfect assistant to create and export crosstabs and charts, and you are complaining about having to use a menu command?

Well, actually it was a menu command in the Pan 6 days, too — but that command was in the File menu, what normally suggests you are applying a command to the database, not just to the contents of a Crosstab window.

Now it is much clearer: You have the Crosstab “Assistant” window, a Crosstab menu, and the command is named “Make a new database with the Crosstab data”.

5

Again, Thank you KJM! However, there is nothing intuitive about the command “Make a new database with the Crosstab data.” Jim’s description of it in the documentation, though, does indicate it may be exported as a text file. I missed that after wading through all the preceding explanatory text. Exporting crosstabs as text files is such a fundamental use of Panorama that it, surely, warrants its own heading, or sub-heading in the Help menu.
Migrating from Panorama 6 is not easy. Crosstabs are handled quite differently in X. I was glad to see that cross-tabs appear in the View menu as they are created.
You not only solved my problem KJM, but you led me into new learning territory, helping keep my octogenarian brain exercised…

6

To be honest, I completely forgot that a crosstab could be exported with the Save As command. When I saw this post I at first thought it was an accident that this worked, but I looked it up, and it is documented, so apparently decades ago I did this on purpose.

I’ve added an item to the issue tracker to add one step commands to the Crosstab menu to do this.

https://bitbucket.org/jimrea/panoramax/i

For now, it takes three steps:

  1. Export to new database
  2. Choose File>Export>Text (CSV) [or tab delimited]
  3. Close the new database
7

Jim - This is why I’ve stuck with Panorama since Overvue: I can’t imagine a Microsoft, Google or Apple taking a single observation from a user seriously enough to act on it! You did so within hours of the thread appearing on the community board.
I know I’ll learn to love PanoramaX as much, if not more than 6. The learning curve has a little higher gradient at 81 than it did when I was in my 40’s!
Best wishes for all success with X.