Swapping Rows and Columns

What do you do if you spend a lot of time setting up a complex table and then decide it's absolutely perfect--except that you want to switch the orientation, putting all of the row variables in the columns and vice versa? For example, you've created a nested crosstabulation with Age category and Gender nested in the rows, but now you want these two demographic variables nested in the columns instead.

  1. Open the table builder (Analyze menu, Tables, Custom Tables).
  2. Right-click anywhere on the canvas pane and select Swap Row and Column Variables from the pop-up menu.

    The row and column variables have now been switched.

    Before creating the table, let's make a few modifications to make the display less cluttered.

  3. Select Hide to suppress the display of the summary statistics column label.
  4. Right-click Gender on the canvas pane and deselect Show Variable Label.
  5. Now click OK to create the table.
Figure 1. Crosstabulation with demographic variables nested in columns
Crosstabulation with demographic variables nested in columns