Can I download the description fields for my extracts?

CPS
1

I have a long coded alphanumeric description of each of my extracts, giving information I think I might want aty some, possibly long, time in the future about each file. Now I putting the file number, description, and a short name I am assigning each file for interactive use together into a single table. I managed to get all my file descriptions together by cut-and-pasting them into a spreadsheet, extracting the column, making various fixes to it, and so forth, but this strikes me as inelegant and tedious.

Is there any easy way to download all the extract file descriptions to a file?

2

Unfortunately, there is not currently a solution built into the IPUMS system to export extract descriptions. We are always looking for suggestions for improvement, so I will definitely make sure this is noted to our team.

Other than copy/paste to a spreadsheet as you have done, there is probably a way to use some web scraping techniques to collect the information, however, if you are unfamiliar with that type of work, it may end up being more time consuming.