creating data input file with large # of covariates

[dtempel]

I'm doing a robust design occupancy analysis with 18 primary sampling periods and 10 secondary sampling periods (i.e. 180 survey occasions). I have one site-specific covariate that varies by primary period and one site-specific covariate that varies by survey occasion. In a spreadsheet, that's 180 columns for the survey history, 180 for the survey occasion covariate, and 18 columns for the primary period covariate. Excel doesn't allow that many columns in a spreadsheet. I used the CONCATENATE function in Excel, but that's caused problems with MARK being able to read the input file.

Any suggestions on the best way to go about creating an input file in this situation? Thanks!

[sbonner]

Hi Dtempel,

Looks like you're using and old(er) version of Excel. Excel 2007 and above allow 16,384 columns in a worksheet (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel ... P005199291). If you don't want to shell out for that, then OpenOffice is free (http://www.openoffice.org/) and the 3.x releases allow at least 1024 columns (according to the documentation, but some forums seem to suggest that might not be a hard limit).

Hope that helps,

Simon