iefieldkit
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worldbank
command idea - scto column sort
If we want to append two SCTO surveys (will be common when we have the best practice survey modules), it is important for functionality that the column order is the same. There is a SCTO default order, but there is no need to stick to that so it is common that they are re-arranged or that extra columns are added. The extra columns can be added to keep notes in or to add multiple languages.
We can create a command that sort a SCTO form in default order.
I am sure that there might be better way to solve this. Maybe the command should do the appending as well and then we can decide which of the two forms column order to use.
The main difficulty with this would be to keep the formatting of the excel sheet. That is nothing I know how to make Stata do.
Given that we would lose the formatting, maybe it would be better to submit this as a feature request to SCTO
It is possible to do this using the advanced putexcel syntax in Stata 15 and might even be a really nice feature as a way to "clean up" big survey forms to a standardized format even if you are not combining them. It is a bigger lift to think carefully about exactly what the "best" formatting would be, but I think it would be much appreciated if it could be done well.
SCTO's sheets has a lot of conditional formatting. So the formatting is updated when you make changes. I do not think we can accomplish the column sorting without screwing this up.
It might be solvable, but I think it is not at the top of our list, and I think the better approach is to just request this from SCTO