Importing/exporting data

• Import and export data from Excel .xls and .xlsx files
• Import and export CSV and delimited data
• Copy/paste data from spreadsheets
• Input data in spreadsheet editor
• Read from and write to SQL sources with ODBC (see below)
• Import and export fixed-format data using a dictionary
• Import and export any type of ASCII data
• Import EBCDIC data and convert EBCDIC to ASCII
• Import and export data in the format required by the FDA for NDA submittals
• Import and export SAS Transport XPORT files
• Import and export XML-formatted data files, including those produced by Microsoft Excel
• Convert datasets directly from other statistical packages, spreadsheets, and databases using third-party software

Watch Import Excel^® Data into Stata tutorial.
Watch Copy/Paste from Excel^® into Stata tutorial.
Watch Converting Data to Stata with Stat/Transfer tutorial.

ODBC support

• Import data from any ODBC data source, such as Oracle, SQL Server, Access, Excel, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
• Export data to new or existing ODBC tables
• Execute custom SQL commands individually or in batches
• Customize ODBC connection strings
• Support for ODBC on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris

Built-in spreadsheet editor

• Clipboard Preview Tool lets you control how data will be pasted
• Manage variables with the Variables Tool
• For Windows, Mac, and Unix

Properties window

• Manage variables
• Manage dataset properties

Variables Manager

• Change storage types, names, and formats
• Add and edit value labels
• Attach notes to variables
• Filter variables

Data-management functions

• Mathematical and statistical functions
• String functions
• Regular expressions
• Date functions
• Time-series operators
• Random-number functions
• Matrix functions
• Programming functions

Data reorganization

• Row–column transposition
• Data reshaping
• Stacking of variables
• Collapsing into means, totals, etc.

Labels

• Dataset labels
• Variable labels
• Value labels (e.g., male and female for 0 and 1)
• Ability to switch between multiple sets of data, variable, and value labels
• Missing-value labels
• Support for multiple languages

Notes

• Extensive notes can be attached to a dataset

Data snapshots

• Allow multiple levels of undo to modified datasets

Automatic memory management

• Up to 1 TB of RAM supported
• Up to 32,767 variables
• Up to 2 billion observations

Sorting

• Ascending or descending sorts
• Multiple-key sorts
• Numeric and string sorts

Merging datasets

• Merge datasets
  • By key variables
  • By observations
• Join datasets
• Outer join
• Append datasets
• Append time series

Special datasets

• Longitudinal data/panel data
• Survival/duration data
• Time series
• Survey data
• Multiple imputations

PDF and image output

• Export results to PDF files on Windows and Mac
• Export results to PostScript files
• Save graphs as PDFs on Windows and Mac
• Save graphs to EPS or TIF files for publication
• Save graphs to PNG files for the web

Utilities

• Compress (make dataset as small as possible without loss of accuracy)
• Formatted and unformatted disk I/O
• Zip-file support
• Custom filters to manipulate text files

Variable management

• Generation of new variables
• Replacement of existing variables
• Encoding and decoding string variables

Dataset reports

• Data signatures to verify the integrity of signatures are about existing data, not new data
• Flexible description of variables, labels, and types
• Codebooks for variables
• Value-label reports
• Duplicates and missing values

Variable types

• Byte
• Integer (int)
• Long
• Float
• Double
• String
• Dates
• Dates and times
• Business calendars

Saved results

• Save results to disk for later use
• Store estimation results in memory
• Create tables to compare results