Re: st: Copy table--how to consistently get correct tab stops

["Sergiy Radyakin" <sergiyradyakin@mail.ru>]

to insert a TAB into output use `=char(9)':
e.g.:
display "Alpha`=char(9)'Omega"

See ASCII tables for other non-printable codes (first 32 codes)

To export to office applications create a matrix holding the table you want 
to export and use -xml_tab- to output it to EXCEL.

Best regards, Sergiy





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Radwin" <radwin@berkeley.edu>
To: <statalist@hsphsun2.harvard.edu>
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2007 2:06 PM
Subject: RE: st: Copy table--how to consistently get correct tab stops



> I respectfully disagree with Tim on SPSS v. Stata on this matter. I used to 
> use SPSS a good deal and still do occasionally, and while Stata is superior 
> in almost every way, in my opinion SPSS is better able to create tables 
> that are simple to copy and paste into Excel or Word for further 
> formatting.
>
> While Tim's technique of inserting text like "zzz" or converting paragraph 
> marks to tabs might work to copy Stata tables, it still requires extra 
> steps in Word or Excel that are not necessary with SPSS. To demonstrate 
> what I mean, below are links to two files containing the crosstabulation 
> of mpg by rep78 that I used as an example earlier. In each file, the first 
> table was pasted from Stata 9.2 and the second was pasted from SPSS 11.0. 
> The key difference is that in both Excel and Word, the SPSS table pasted 
> correctly with no additional formatting while the Stata table incorrectly 
> added an extra column. The SPSS table also has the nice feature of not 
> breaking up the headings into two lines.
>
> https://webfiles.berkeley.edu/~radwin/Copy_table_to_Excel.xls
>
> https://webfiles.berkeley.edu/~radwin/Copy_table_to_Word.doc
>
> In my line of work (university administration), Excel and Word are the 
> standard for creating and sharing data analysis (although these analyses 
> are often converted to Powerpoint or PDF for the latter purpose). Pasting 
> tables quickly, efficiently, and accurately into these programs is far 
> more important than, say, providing correct standard errors for 
> multinomial logit for a survey with multistage sampling.
>
> In fact, copying tables is the main issue that prevents me from 
> universally recommending Stata to my colleagues (as opposed to SPSS, SAS, 
> or nothing at all). I wish this were possible from the standard -tabulate- 
> commands, because most of my colleagues are not interested in 
> learning -display- or -tabout- to get a properly formatted table into Word 
> or Excel when they could do so more easily in SPSS.
>
> David
>
> At 9:47 AM +0100 7/6/07, Mak, Timothy wrote:
>
> > I don't use SAS so I cannot comment on SAS, but I have to say Stata is
> > far far more flexible in its output of nicely formatted tables than SPSS
> > can ever be. I don't use the Copy Table function, but what I do is I use
> > the -display- function to get the stats in exactly the format I want. Ok
> > I don't know how to generate a 'tab' in Stata, but instead of tab, I can
> > generate a funny piece of string, say "zzz" or something, and use copy
> > text in Stata to paste the whole thing in Word. Use Find/Replace to
> > change all the "zzz" to tabs, then use Convert text to table in Word.
> > Voila. Done! No need to fix up decimal places, change the order of the
> > stats, etc. Output is always consistent as long as you type your
> > -display- function the same way. Down side is, of course you need to
> > learn to write the -display- command, but the time saved will soon make
> > it worthwhile.
> >
> > Tim
> >
> > PS An even quicker way is to use paragraph marks instead of tabs, and
> > then just use Convert text to table in Word, and adjust the number of
> > columns.
> --
> David Radwin, Principal Analyst // radwin@berkeley.edu
> Office of Student Research, University of California, Berkeley
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