CanoMerge is a little utility program that improves the usability of the Canoco for Windows package, allowing you to export large data tables from Excel spreadsheets.
If you record your data in spreadsheet documents (with the rows representing samples and the columns representing species / variables, or vice versa), you can use WCanoImp to export them into data files that are accepted by Canoco for Windows. But there is a problem if you have more than 256 species and also more than 256 samples. This is because you can have in Excel sheets at most 256 columns . If you have, say, 200 species and 2000 samples, you can place your species into columns and the rows then represent your samples. If you have 300 species and only 200 samples, you can transpose the data matrix in Excel sheet. WCanoImp can transpose it back, if needed.
But if you have, say, 500 samples and 400 species, you cannot put them into Excel spreadsheet, using a single sheet only. With CanoMerge program, you can do so, using the following steps:
- Use spreadsheet rows for samples and put your species into two sheets of the same spreadsheet file. You can place, for example, the first 200 species into first sheet, and the remaining 200 species into the second one. The corresponding rows represent the same sample in both sheets.
- Export contents of the two sheets separately using the WCanoImp program, naming them data1.dta and data2.dta, for example.
- Run the CanoMerge program and specify the options as illustrated in the snapshot below. To include the two file names, use the Add files button.
CanoMerge snapshot 