Junctions 9 and above, includes a feature specially designed for setting up links between Excel spreadsheets and Junctions. For full details, please see the Junctions User Guide, Section “Reading Demand Set flow data from Excel”. Using this mode, you can tell Junctions where in the Excel spreadsheet the traffic data is located and Junctions can then automatically pull the data from Excel, switching to different Excel worksheets as needed.
Additionally, you can copy and paste between individual screens and Excel using a method which is also available in previous versions of Junctions, as follows.
- There are Copy and Paste buttons on the main toolbar in Junctions, and corresponding options in the Edit menu. Most screens respond to these buttons.
- For example, if you display the OD Matrix screen, and then press the Copy button on the main toolbar, the OD Matrix data will be copied to the clipboard. If you then go to Excel and paste this data, you will see the format data. You can then mark the pasted area in a different colour to indicate the area that you can subsequently grab and paste back into Junctions once you’ve edited it. Then go back to Junctions, display the OD Matrix and then press the Paste button on the main toolbar.
- If you try to paste in data that contains the wrong number of rows or columns, Junctions will usually show an error message.
- The same system applies to most screens. For instance, you can display the Demand screen, click in the lower grid and then paste in suitably formatted data from Excel. Or you can show a Data Grid of arm geometries, and copy/paste the data.
- Note that with some screens, there are several ‘levels’ of copy/paste. On the Data Editor, for example, you can copy individual pieces of text as with any other program. However, if you display the Data Editor and then click the Copy button on the main toolbar, then all data currently shown in the Data Editor will be copied to the clipboard in a format that can neatly be pasted into Excel or any other program, or, copied between different Junctions files.
- Similarly, in the Summary Results screen, you can manually select text and then right-click and select Copy. Alternatively, clicking Copy on the main toolbar will grab the entire contents of the Summary Results in a format that you can paste into Word.
In Junctions 9 and above, the system above is extended so that you can copy/paste data from a given screen for all Demand Sets and/or time segments:
- Click on the screen of interest – for example, the OD Matrix screen.
- Go to Edit>Copy/Paste All
- Tick ‘Copy’ and then tick, for instance, “current time segment, all Demand Sets”. This option can be used if there is only one time segment’s worth of data, such as if using a single OD matrix for the whole period (the default option for new files).
- Click ‘Go’. Then go to Excel and paste the data. We recommend that you then immediately set the colour or other formatting of the pasted selection so that you can easily re-select it later on. The data in this example will be the OD matrix for each Demand Set.
- Edit the data in Excel.
- Grab the same area, copy it to the clipboard and then use the same process as above to paste it back into Junctions, this time selecting the ‘Paste’ option of course.
- Once familiar with the format, you can start new files by entering the traffic data directly into Excel, and then pasting into the Junctions file. Note however that you will firstly need to create the blank Demand Sets in the Junctions file, otherwise the pasted data will be ignored.