automatic file backup

[Dale]

I'm working with SPSS 10.0.0 and just lost a fair amount of work from
a seeming lack of automatic file backups while the program is running.
I checked the help and the SPSS website with no luck. Does anyone
know how to set a time frame (or a shorter one if the program has
one)for auto-backups of data files?

Thanks.

[Rich Ulrich]

A word-processor might assume that any file you are working
on is small enough to make copies of, at intervals.
I don't think a stat-package *should* make that assumption.
Automatic backups of gigabytes?

If you are doing serious work, you save your syntax files.
- I do wonder how many people are working *without*
using syntax files, now. It seems like you might get in
that habit, if you are teaching yourself, and 'learning
by doing.'

If you have a serious DATA file, you SAVE OUTPUT=.

If you are testing lines, you can delete things, and highlight
the last lines and just run them. Any time you have got
another procedure that is worth saving, you just use
Control-S to update the save of the control lines.

--
Rich Ulrich, wpi...@pitt.edu
http://www.pitt.edu/~wpilib/index.html

[Art Kendall]

I concur with Rich's opinion. Do frequent saves of the syntax files.

Under almost all circumstances, (maybe all circumstances but there is an
outside chance someone would think of an exception)
***It is poor practice to write over a variable or an input file.***
Take the time to save new file versions with new names, unless you are on
OpenVMS which will save with a new version number by default and keep the
older versions. Use recode into. Use new variable names for reflected items.
etc.

I think the GUI is wonderful. However, for quality assurance purposes, and
as a hedge against contingencies, I strongly advocate using the "paste"
button.
You can go through a menu sequence, click <paste>, then go back and start
the menu sequence again. your selections will be sticky so you won't have to
make them again.

Perhaps SPSS should have an _option_ to have <OK> or <paste> be
<OK> and <Paste>. Or there should be a third button to do both on all
menus.

[Hendrik Delagrange]

Don't forget that there also is a journal in SPSS, which holds all the
syntax you run, either through the syntax window or through menu's.
Check your options to see where it is and to check that it adds all
the time and not overwrites it each session.

For a lot of purposes, running some syntax again should make it
possible to reconstruct your file with the latest changes if something
happens.

BTW I would not say that SPSS *lacks* an autosave. Personally, I do
not *want* spss to autosave, because it might save my datafile at a
moment where an error in my syntax just has been processed and I might
want not to keep that file.

Maybe you should try to consider that not all software is built like
MS Office. Moreover, I have never ever heard of problems with *.sav
files that were corruptred or anything like that. So your backups are
not as important as in MS Office. Keeping different versions at times
you decide, are.

--Hendrik Delagrange

mand...@yahoo.com (Dale) wrote in message news:<7a4b1b07.02022...@posting.google.com>...