Wendell Joice
>
> This topic has been discussed before but with the advent of
> version 8 , I
> was wondering if there is anything new in version 8 or
> elsewhere that will
> facilitate exporting output (tables) from stata commands
> such as tabulate,
> table, etc. to spreadsheets (Excel...) or word processors
> (Word...). I am
> not referring to simply exporting the graphic image of a
> table but actually
> exporting the tabular data into the table application of a
> spreadsheet or
> word processor, so that you can edit/manipulate the data in the
> spreadsheet/processor.
I don't think so (I haven't read the entire manual).
For what it's worth, it is perhaps pertinent to
emphasise, especially for relatively new list members
not accustomed to the usual outbursts of prejudices
here from long-active members, myself included:
1. As a point of principle, Stata Corp is cross-platform
and in general aims to produce tools valid across
operating systems and independent of other software
which users may or may not have access to (or use).
There have been, and will continue to be, exceptions
to that, including the recent introduction of ODBC
functionality, but it's a strong Stata principle nevertheless.
2. In practice, Stata Corp developers mostly do not
use Microsoft software in a non-trivial way,
except for the purposes of
producing an executable which will run under Windows.
And a large fraction of official Stata innovation
is driven by an academic model of the developers
working on their own best ideas (in fact, Stata Corp is
more like the academy than much of the academy...).
3. In practice, although to a lesser extent, the majority of
the most productive user-programmers seem to behave
similarly, never use Word, Excel, etc., and would
have no interest in writing tools for interacting with
them -- in some cases even strong moral or technical
objections to the notion.
Nevertheless, it is, I guess, true that
4. One of the largest single groups of Stata users would use
as their other software (probably) their mailer, MS
Word and MS Excel.
But that's as may be. A more positive comment is what --
precisely -- do you need, want, expect?
Nick
[email protected]
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