Formatting and Customizing Tables

Custom Tables provides the ability to control a number of table-formatting properties as part of the table-building process, including:

• Display format and labels for summary statistics
• Minimum and maximum data column width
• Text or value displayed in empty cells

These settings persist within the table builder interface (until you change them, reset the table builder settings, or open a different data file), enabling you to create multiple tables with the same formatting properties without manually editing the tables after creating them. You can also save these formatting settings, along with all of the other table parameters, using the Paste button in the table builder interface to paste command syntax into a syntax window, which you can then save as a file.

You can also change many formatting properties of tables after they have been created, using all of the formatting capabilities available in the Viewer for pivot tables. This chapter, however, focuses on controlling table formatting properties before the table is created. For more information on pivot tables, use the Index tab in the Help system and type pivot tables as the keyword.

Sample Data File

The examples in this chapter use the data file survey_sample.sav. See the topic Sample Files for more information.

All examples provided here display variable labels in dialog boxes, sorted in alphabetical order. Variable list display properties are set on the General tab in the Options dialog box (Edit menu, Options).