Building Reports: Merging Report Files
By merging report files built from several
different data files, you can, in effect,
merge the results from all of the respondents
represented in those data files.

For example, you might have data files with
survey results from several different parts
of the country.  You can keep the data in the
separate files and still see the composite
results as if all responses had come from the
same data file.

First you build your individual reports by
scanning the various individual data files.
You save each report as a disk file before
building the next one.  Once you have all the
report files built, you load them one at a
time, using the report-control workscreen.


Each time you add another report, be sure to
set the report-control workscreen to keep the
existing format and results.  This will cause
the program to merge all of the statistics,
just as if you had merged the original data.

As an alternative method, you can simply
accumulate the results of each successive data
scan, by choosing to retain the results from
each file.  This will give you a cumulative
report of all the scans, and you only need to
save this one composite report file.

If you don't need the intermediate reports,
this is the simplest and easiest way.  Be sure
to save the final composite report on disk for
later use.  On the other hand, you have
greater flexibility in building composite
report files if you save them as individual
files with well-defined data scans.