On 2014-06-30 20:53, epidata-list@lists.umanitoba.ca wrote:
Dear Kusulla:
In EpiData Entry 3.1 (which you presumably use), you should not ever loose any data (nor get such a message), if:
- you do not change the field type of an existing field
- do not shorten the field length of an existing field
- add a new field
- change the sequence of fields
You will loose data (and get alerted to it), if:
- you remove an existing field
- shorten the field length of an existing field
- change the field type of an existing field
Regards,
Hans
In addition to Hans reply i would ask you to consider using the new programs EpiData Manager and EpiData EntryClient, since many of these limitation with reconstructing the database are not present any more.
A short list of pro's and con's to consider:
Pro's: * You do not loose data when: - reordering, resequence, rename - change length - add new fields * Dataloss will only occur if you explicit delete a field (and you will be warned twice when doing so) * A direct visual representation of your layout (The WYSIWYG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG model) * All of data, structure and meta-data is present in a single file (no longer 3 files to maintain: qes, rec, chk) * EpiData Entry 3.1 is no longer maintained.
Con's: * Does not support all features of the old EpiData 3.1 (yet! - the lastest experimental release now also supports related datasets) * Importing .rec/.chk files is limited to only import simple .chk structures. * The interaction between Manager/EntryClient and Analysis is not perfect, working but not perfect.
My general recommendation is to use Manager/EntryClient unless there are some specific features of Entry 3.1 you must use that are currently not present in the new programs.
Kind regards, Torsten Bonde Christiansen. EpiData Association.