When I downloaded the data, it didn't paste in Excel very nicely. No problem, I can cope with that and did so with only a little difficulty. The two graphics below show the before and after. For the before work sheet I needed to copy from the web page and then Paste Special, Text but even so the result was a bit of a mess!
I moved things around and got the following, tidy result:
However, part of the way through my initial analysis of the data I noticed a feature of the data that I hadn't spotted before. I was torn: do I go through each of the eight thousand cells or do I go back to the web site and download the data and start again ... after all, I had cleaned the original database without copying and protecting the original work sheet.
Cut a long story short, I wasted some time last night with the first option, inspecting each of the eight thousand cells. This morning I had a rethink, went back to the web site, downloaded the data again and cleaned the data again ... the better solution.
The Moral of the Story
When downloading and copying data, keep the original data safe and unchanged somewhere: the father and son principle.
Duncan Williamson
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