# Using report files

There are a couple things to know about report files that can make them easier to read and analyze.

1. **Some text fields will be too wide to view in Excel - expand them to read them**\
   Numbers/dates that are too wide to display are visually replaced by ##### in Excel. Double-click on the cell and then click outside it, and the column width will adjust to show the entire number/date.<br>
2. **Within each report type, information is arranged systematically. Sorting order is defined by the column types from left to right, with columns further right used to "break ties" in earlier columns.**\
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   **Phases** are sorted *chronologically* \
   **Trials** are sorted *chronologically*\
   **Groups** are sorted *alphabetically*\
   **Tags** are sorted *alphabetically*\
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   For example, in the [Summary Across Groups and Tags](https://ldevumd.gitbook.io/bittsy/standard-reports#summary-across-groups-and-tags) report, the columns from left to right are: Phase, Group, Tag, LookingTimePerTrial. This means that we'll sort first by phase: looking times for all the groups and tags that were presented in a single phase will be arranged together. Averages always go at the beginning of each phase, and are ordered alphabetically by group name. Then within each phase, we'll sort by the group that the tag belonged to. Within each group, we'll report the tags in alphabetical order.\
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   Whenever you need to pull measures from individual reports for further analysis, this helps you easily select the right values. However, any log that is from a session that was ended early or was accidentally included from a different experiment will have a different number of lines or have information that should not be included. If you are using formulas to pull values from every X rows, you should always verify that these line up correctly.\
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   If you have multiple protocols for different versions of a single study, keeping your group and tag names consistent across protocols and merely changing their [file references](https://ldevumd.gitbook.io/bittsy/creating-protocols/tags/tags-referencing-files) or [group members](https://ldevumd.gitbook.io/bittsy/creating-protocols/tags/groups) helps ensure that you can easily analyze these versions together, since the row numbers in which certain pieces of information appear will be consistent across participants in those different study versions.