st: Problems insheeting long variable names

["Daniel Brodback" <schmani@gmx.de>]

Dear all,

I am trying to insheet some data that I obtained from the Datastream database. Namely, returns and valuation ratios of S&P 500 constituents.
I am running Stata SE 11.2
The Data is in the following format, I generate a *.csv out of the excel file to input the data:


Date   CompanyA_return   CompanyA_Market Value    Company_A_PE...

However, as Datastream names requests as shown here: http://dss.princeton.edu/usingdata/stata/dataman/reshapeds.htm  I have some rather long names, e.g. "ALZA CORP. DEAD - MERGER 22/06/01 - PRICE TO BOOK VAL".

What I want to do now is to insheet the data, however I want the Datastream Name to be only a label and rather work with variable names like v1 etc. When I tell Stata to insheet my file with the  nonames option, I get the following error message:

system limit exceeded -- width shortage
    An attempt was made to add a variable that would have increased the memory required to store an observation beyond 60000 bytes, the
    maximum width allowed.

Without the nonames option the data are insheeted and named with their Datastream names (that are stored in the first row), which I want to avoid.
Is there any way I can get the first row of my csv file to be labels and name the variables v1 etc?

Best,

Daniel
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