Stata: Data Analysis and Statistical Software

"You can download a free demo copy of Stat/Transfer. You will get a
complete, functioning copy, except that one out of about every sixteen
cases will not be transferred."


--------------------------------------------
Jorge Eduardo Pérez Pérez
Graduate Student
Department of Economics
Brown University


On Sat, Mar 8, 2014 at 12:33 PM, Nick Cox <njcoxstata@gmail.com> wrote:
> I cannot help on line dropping.
>
> Two notes on the side:
>
> 1. -fs- remains a user-written command from SSC, so I surmise you
> installed it at some point.
>
> 2. As recently mentioned here, -dropmiss- (SJ) is best used in some form like
>
> dropmiss, force
>
> which is a relatively clean way to -drop- all variables that have all
> observations missing. I am a bit fuzzy on the original motivation (it
> goes back to 1997 at least) but the tendency of spreadsheet users to
> leave blank columns that there were then read as variables by Stata
> was something that has been fixable this way for a long while. I don't
> know of an option to do this with -import excel-.
>
>
> Nick
> njcoxstata@gmail.com
>
>
> On 8 March 2014 16:34, Simon Moore <simoncmoore@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello Statalist
>>
>> I occasionally process data that arrives from various locations in excel
>> files (n > 50) and that change from time to time. I use Stat Transfer (v10)
>> to convert these files to Stata (I am on v13MP) by including the following
>> line in a .do file:
>>
>> cd "`dir'"
>> stcmd *.xlsx *.dta /y
>>
>> I have found that this does create .dta files but drops every 16th line
>> of data. Just wondering if anyone else here had encountered this and if
>> this is something to do with Stat Transfer, Stata of excel? It is a bit
>> of a worry.
>>
>> My solution is to, rather clumsily, import the files into Stata and
>> save as .dta files:
>>
>>         cd "`dir'"
>>         fs *.xlsx *.xls
>>         foreach f in `r(files)' {
>>                 import excel "`dir'\`f'", firstrow
>>                         loc id = substr("`f'",1, strpos("`f'",".")-1)
>>                         save "`dir'\`id'.dta", replace
>>                 clear
>>                 }
>>
>> dir is a local macro pointing to the location of the excel files.
>>
>> fs is (I think) a user (Nicholas Cox) written package, but I don't
>> remember installing it. So maybe it comes with Stata these days?
>>
>> One thing I notice is that this route has a tendency to include "empty"
>> variables. By this I mean columns in excel that contain no data and are
>> imported as variables with missing values. This is not an issue for me,
>> but is there a simple means of restricting the import to excel columns
>> that only contain data? For me I cannot specify a range as the number of
>> columns in the sheet and names of variables differs between excel sheets
>> (for example some will contain date of birth, some age and others both).
>>
>> Regards
>> Simon Moore
>>
>>
>> *
>> *   For searches and help try:
>> *   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
>> *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
>> *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/
> *
> *   For searches and help try:
> *   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
> *   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
> *   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/

*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?search
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/resources/statalist-faq/
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/