A Lertap 5 workbook is an Excel workbook with the particular features mentioned here.

 

A Lertap 5 workbook will always have at least two primary worksheets: one of these is named Data, the other is named CCs.

 

The Data worksheet's top two rows are reserved for titles.  The first row may contain any text; it's used as a means of briefly describing the data found in the worksheet.  For example, the first row might say "Data collected 10 March 2023 in Psych 501".

 

The second row of the Data worksheet contains column headers.  For example, if the first column of each data record is some sort of ID field, then the contents of the worksheet cell formed by Row 2, Column 1 might be "ID Number".  If responses to the first item are found in column 5 of each data record, then the contents of the worksheet cell formed by Row 2, Column 5 might be "Item5".

 

Data records begin in Row 3 of the Data worksheet.

 

If the first column of any row in the Data worksheet is empty, or contains a zero, then that is considered to be the end of data.  (Users sometimes use this fact when they're testing their CCs lines to make the test go faster, a blank line may be inserted after, say, 10 data records -- this stops Lertap from reading all the data records.)

 

If the first column of a row in the CCs worksheet is blank, then that is considered to be the end of the CCs lines -- Lertap will not read beyond this line.  (This is useful when a user only wants to have the Freqs worksheet produced -- in this case the first CCs line will be *col, and the second line will be blank -- Lertap will produce its Freqs worksheet, and nothing else.)

 

Ideally, a Lertap 5 workbook has its default font set to Verdana, with the CCs worksheet being an exception in that it may at times make use of the Courier New font.

 

Lertap workbooks may have a number of secondary worksheets in addition to the primary ones.  Examples of secondary worksheets are Freqs, Stats1f, Stats1b, Scores, and so on.  Secondary worksheets are usually the result of applying a Lertap or Excel function; for example, the "Elmillon item analysis" option on the Run menu reads data records from the Data worksheet, a primary worksheet, and produces such secondary worksheets as Stats1f and Stats1b.

 

(For a related topic, see Deleting secondary worksheets.)

 

Lertap workbooks may also have other user-created worksheets.  For example, in data sets with more than one subtest, or scale, users will sometimes create a codebook worksheet which keeps track of the location of the items comprising the subtests or scales.

 

Note that a Lertap workbook does not include the Lertap toolbar.  It bears mentioning that the Lertap5.xlsm file is indeed a Lertap workbook, but, if someone uses the term "Lertap workbook", they are not necessarily referring to Lertap5.xlsm.  We could say that the Lertap5.xlsm workbook is a very special Lertap workbook.  Why?  Because the Lertap5.xlsm workbook includes the Lertap toolbar, something no other Lertap workbook will have.