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st: RE: Problems with Stata 8
Jose Ernesto Lopez-Cordova
> I recently switched to Stata 8 and I4m experiencing
> the following problems:
> (1) I am trying to read data originally in a MS Excel
> file into Stata. After reading the data one of my
> variables has all missing observations. I have tried
> these alternatives: copying and pasting into the data
> editor; transforming into CSV or tab-separated TXT
> files and then using the insheet command; formating
> the variable in Excel as a string and as a numeric
> value and reading it into Stata.
> What puzzles me the most is that these different
> alternatives work just fine when I implement them in
> Stata 7, which I still have in my PC.
> Did the <insheet> command change (incidentally, in
> Stata 8, I also set the version to 7 and then use the
> insheet command; no success either)?
. help whatsnew7to8
15. Existing command insheet has a new delimiter(char)
option that allows you to specify an arbitrary character
as the value separator; see help insheet.
Moreover, in 8.1,
12. insheet did not honor the double option; this is fixed.
There are various suggestions in
> (2) I tried using the xtile command and get an
> "invalid syntax" error. This problem doesn't occur
> when I use Stata 7. As a check, using again Stata 8, I
> used the dataset suggeted in the reference manuals and
> followed exactly what the manual does. I still get an
> error message.
Going to [R] pctile, p.146, I typed
use http://www.stata-press.com/data/r8/bp1, clear
list bp, sep(4)
xtile quart = bp, nq(4)
list bp quart, sep(4)
and got the results there claimed. So I cannot
reproduce what you report.
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