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Importing and exporting text-delimited data was introduced in Stata 13.

See the latest version of importing and exporting text-delimited data. See all of Stata's data management features.

See the new features in Stata 18.

Importing and exporting text-delimited data

Order

video: Importing and exporting text-delimited data

Highlights

  • Importing
    • Any text-delimited file (*.csv, *.txt, etc.)
    • Preview lets you see how the data will look in Stata even before you import them
    • Default delimiter is a comma
    • May specify delimiter, including multiple-character delimiters
    • May specify multiple delimiters
    • Variable names may be on any row in the file
    • Import selected row ranges
    • Import selected column ranges
    • Automatic storage types
    • Force specific columns to be numeric or string
    • Support for long strings
    • Double quotes to delimit strings
    • Allows "" to mean real double quotes in data (as used by Excel)
  • Exporting
    • May specify delimiter
    • Optionally save variable names in first row of data
    • Support for long strings


Show me

The new commands for easily importing and exporting data to and from Stata are import delimited and export delimited.

import delimited is the star of the two. Exporting from Stata has always been easy.

Do you see the preview at the bottom of the screenshot? We have not yet imported any data! We are in the process of filling in the dialog box. As we work, we see exactly how our data would look if we were to import them into Stata using the current settings.

Show me more

See the import and export delimited manual entry.

There's an import excel, too.

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See New in Stata 18 to learn about what was added in Stata 18.