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Re: st: Excel and numbers treated as strings
From
[email protected] (Brendan Halpin)
To
[email protected]
Subject
Re: st: Excel and numbers treated as strings
Date
Wed, 09 May 2012 20:49:42 +0100
On Wed, May 09 2012, Douglas Levy wrote:
> Is there a way to export a file from Stata such that Excel or Access
> would treat a numeric variable as a string? I am processing data in
> Stata to be used in a mail merge in Excel or Access. The file I want
> to export has ZIP (postal) codes in it that I need treated as a string
> variable to preserve any leading zeroes.
If you have a numeric variable for zip code which is showing you leading
zeroes, it must have its format set to do so. I don't know the rules for
zip codes, but I assume that means they have a fixed length.
What about creating a string variable with the same format?
gen str8 zipcodestr = string(zipcode, "%08.0f")
This assumes 8 digit codes. I'm also assuming Excel will not be so
"clever" as to read a digit-only string as a number. In that case you
could try pre-pending or appending a character to the string and
stripping it in Excel.
Brendan
--
Brendan Halpin, Department of Sociology, University of Limerick, Ireland
Tel: w +353-61-213147 f +353-61-202569 h +353-61-338562; Room F1-009 x 3147
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http://teaching.sociology.ul.ie/bhalpin/wordpress twitter:@ULSociology
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