How To's > Work with Collections

Work with Collections

The collection is the object that holds your data (see Where Are the Data? and Collections). You can create an empty collection by dragging one from the object shelf. Often, collections are automatically created for you, for example, when you name the first attribute in an empty case table or when you import data. See Get Data into Fathom for details about importing and pasting data into Fathom. To type data, use a case table; see Enter Data from Scratch for more details.

Collections are iconified when first created. Open a collection by enlarging it. By default, each case is represented by a gold ball (see Change the Appearance of Cases in a Collection).

This section of Fathom Help addresses how to do things with the collection. Many tasks in this section (such as Add an Attribute to a Collection, Define an Attribute by Formula Using the Collection's Inspector, Copy and Paste an Attribute's Formula, Clear a Formula for an Attribute, Rename an Attribute in a Collection's Inspector, Delete an Attribute, or Manage Units in the Collection's Inspector) could also be done in a case table.

Many of these tasks are done using the collection's inspector (such as Control Behavior of Categorical Attributes Using Category Sets, or Define a Measure). See Show a Collection's Inspector.

· To show a collection's inspector, double-click it, or select it and choose Object | Inspect Collection.

Other Subsections
Add Cases to a Collection
Generate Random Values
Delete Cases
Restrict the Cases You See by Filtering Data
Force a Numeric Attribute to Be Treated Categorically
Force a Categorical Attribute to Be Treated as Numeric
Merge Two Collections
Prevent Data from Being Changed in Graphs
Restructure Data-Stack Attributes
Export Data to Other Programs
See also
Derived Collections
Collection Menu
Inspector Panels

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