To create a multiproject directory, you might type:

The list is terminated with a blank entry.

You can enter more than one directory name or job ID at each prompt. This has the effect of merging the named databases into a single element of the multiproject database. For example:

These examples take the three databases for March, April and May and merge them to form the Spring element in the mflip project axis (which you might have called season). Similarly, the June, July and August databases are merged to form the Summer element.

Directory names/job IDs in the list are separated by spaces.

A database can be in more than one element of the project axis: you might, for example, want to include September in both the Summer and Autumn periods. Flipping databases in this way affects the way that Quanvert works for users (it always uses the project axis as the columns of the table), so it is advisable to include some references to the constituent databases in the element texts of the project axis.

For example:

When you press Enter, mflip lists the database names and their corresponding directories and checks that this is correct before starting to link the common variables into the multiproject database:

As each type of variable is copied, mflip reports the total number of each type linked.

It is at this time that the database axis is created. It consists of a Base element and as many other elements as there are databases in the multiproject directory. In a national readership survey, for example, the region axis may have five elements — Base, North, South, East and West.

If there are no common variables or mflip is unable to copy files, an error message is issued and the run stops. Where files already exist, they are overwritten without warning. A message is displayed when the run is complete.