Here's a "fixed" table shells file for this week's release

I just spent a couple hours manually stripping all tables that are NOT included in the 2014 5-year release, out of the 2014 table shells file. Here it is!


[Updated on 11/30/2015 5:01 PM]
  • Hi Glenn, can you explain the problem you're fixing?
  • Up until last year, the Bureau made available a separate table-shells file for each period, i.e. 1-, 3- and 5-year. Now there's a single file for all 3 (now 2) annual ACS releases.

    Some of us use the table-shells file to control processing of the raw data. In my case at least, if the table-shells file contains tables/columns that don't exist in the data, there's a problem.

    So, this isn't really a "fix", but a reversion to the earlier table shells format in order to match the data.
  • Thanks for the explanation. We also need an external file for data processing, but we've used the file templates, which are already available: www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/summary_file/2014/data/2014_5yr_Summary_FileTemplates.zip. My guess/hope is that these files are still specific to the 5-year estimates.

    What they're missing is any metadata, so the table-shells file is still really useful for that. Thanks for posting.
  • And.... Thank YOU for letting me know where the Bureau is now putting data on its FTP site! :) I was looking all over for the 2014 1-year data.