topic Re: pasting bug? in Discussions

pasting bug?

Maureen — Tue, 14 Aug 2018 20:17:15 GMT

I am having a very difficult time lately copying and pasting from excel (Excel for Macintosh version 16.12) to JMP (13.2.0).

A column of numbers (not dates or text) will want to paste as characters. When I accept that and then go into Standardize attributes and recode I can always find one single value that has gibberish characters added to the number.

This can even happen if I take a numerical column of data, paste it into Excel and immediately back into JMP - junk characters are added that are invisible in Excel (Excel treats the data as numbers).

Anyone know of a fix for this?

Re: pasting bug?

gzmorgan0 — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 03:55:53 GMT

I don't have a MAC so here are 3 suggestions:

Format the numeric columns as Numeric
Use the Excel Clean function =Numbervalue(Clean(A1)) that removes unprintable characters.
Use Open > Excel Wizard. A column with unprintable characters in Excel (line feedd and tables and leading and trailing spaces) did not paste correctly into JMP. However, when I opened that same file using the Excel Wizard all the junk was removed.

Neither method is easy if you have numerous columns. But I'd suggest you copy and paste into a new sheet.

Then use the JMP Excel Wizard and only select that sheet. In JMP 13, I have seen that the Excel wizard has some problems with columns with formulas, so make sure the columns have values. [JMP 14 does not have this issue].

Good Luck!

Re: pasting bug?

Jeff_Perkinson — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 13:45:54 GMT

Without seeing the original Excel file this will likely be difficult to diagnose. If you can't post a sanitized version here, contact Tech Support and send them the file. They can probably explain what's happening and give strategies (perhaps like @gzmorgan0's above) that will help.

Re: pasting bug?

Maureen — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 14:51:09 GMT

It's always different files. A clarification from my first post is that I can take a column of numbers from JMP, paste them into Excel and then immediately paste them back into JMP and have it happen.

It usually happens in the last column of data copied over.

Here is a screenshot of one from today.

Re: pasting bug?

Jeff_Perkinson — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 21:21:04 GMT

That is odd. I've tried to replicate the problem here but haven't been able to. I do notice that I have Excel 16.16. Is it possible for you to make sure you've got the latest release of Excel?

Re: pasting bug?

gzmorgan0 — Wed, 15 Aug 2018 22:48:09 GMT

This is a sidebar to your issue. Might I ask what you are trying to do?

Were you copying from JMP to Excel then back again, only to create a good test case, or was this what you were doing when you found the problem?

The reason I am asking is because I have seen newer JMP users do this to use Excel's filters and/or stacking and/or formulas. I do not wish to offend, I am just asking.

If your task is to just copy from Excel to JMP, please ignore my question.

Re: pasting bug?

Maureen — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 16:08:42 GMT

I go back and forth between JMP and Excel all the time. I can do basic formulas in JMP, but for logical formulas and a few other things I am much more familiar with Excel. All my statistics are JMP, but I do clean and organize data in Excel just because it's easier for me.

Re: pasting bug?

gzmorgan0 — Thu, 16 Aug 2018 23:39:53 GMT

I would encourage you to learn a few more JMP functions and table features. I have numerous experiences where Excel devotees were using JMP for the statistics and graphics and using Excel to do some data cleaning. And after a few hints, they gave up the copy and paste back and forth with Excel.

Here is a 30 minute video, you might find useful, it is titled Letting Go of Excel

https://community.jmp.com/t5/video/gallerypage/video-id/xqbW40ODE6WV5ISTJ_ASyNfZRb4i0NVv

Below is a "reading list" if you are interested in leraning more.

Good Luck!

Note Help>Scripting Index will show you JSL synatx for things that you can do in the formula editor. Even if you are not interested in scripting, this is an easy method to learn what a function does. Help>Scripting Index > Functions

Conditional functions: If() , Match(), Choose(), And(), Or() , IsMissing()
Character functions: Concat(), Substr(), Starts With(), End With(), Trim(), Char(), Num(), Lenght(), Word() You will be surprised how useful Word() can be for pulling items from string.
Numeric, Transcendental, Trignometric
Statistical

Help>Scripting Index > Objects > Data Table

Search for Stack, Split, Subset

Learn how to use Row> Select > Select Where with Add condition...very useful