st: Newbie with too many variables

[Robin Newberry <wnewber@clemson.edu>]

All,

So our worker's comp data are in some clunky old program (which shall 
remain nameless here). To get it into a program where I can actually 
do something with the data is a royal pain; it will only export the 
entire dataset (12 years of data) and only in a comma delimited 
format at that. And all the fields are enclosed in quotes - even the 
numeric.

Last time I did this (once a year I go to download only the previous 
years WC data, only to remember that I can't) I think it took better 
than a month to manually clean up the data to import using a text 
editor. I'd really like to avoid that this time; in fact, I think 
last time I imported it into SAS, cleaned it up there, then sent it 
to Stata. A real roundabout way to get at my data.

Anyhow, I've set my Stata memory at 1gig and used the command 
"insheet using "/Users/wnewber/Desktop/EXPORT.TXT", comma" to import 
it. I get a too many variables message. I forget exactly how many 
variables this dataset has - I think 200+ (most are empty place 
holders for fields we don't use).

Any way to get this puppy in to Stata without sacrificing some small, 
hapless animal to the heathen gods?
--
Robin
--------------------------------------------------------------
W. Robert Newberry, IV CIH, CHMM
Chief Environmental Health and Safety Officer
Clemson University

wnewber@clemson.edu  ehs@clemson.edu
http://ehs.clemson.edu/
*
*   For searches and help try:
*   http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/res/findit.html
*   http://www.stata.com/support/statalist/faq
*   http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/stata/