st: exporting formulas from stata to excel

[Eric Stradley <estradley@welchcon.com>]

Statalisters,

I have used stata12 to create string variables that contain excel-type 
formulas. Ideally, I would like to export a stata .dta file into excel 
that evaluates the formulas.

For instance, I have a variable AZ that corresponds to column AZ in my 
excel notebook and contains something like

=IF(AY12="","",AY12/BT12)


I've exported the data as text with a unique delimiter, like ";", but 
then I still have to text-to-column in each spreadsheet which 
surprisingly seems to run up against some variable width issues in excel 
(I have some much longer formulas). Additionally, the point of the 
exercise is to cleverly fill down the formulas according to _n in stata 
and avoid having to fill down in excel, which can get tedious across 
many notebooks and rows. That said, I thought I would take advantage of 
stata12's export excel command, and when I do so I get something of the 
form:

                        AZ
  =IF(AY12="","",AY12/BT12)

which seems to be exactly what I want. However, the excel notebook 
refuses to execute the formula unless I click into each individual cell, 
which again is tedious and ruins the point of the exercise.

Sorry that this is more of an excel question than a Stata question, but 
I am curious to know if anyone has tried this before and/or has any 
suggestions. Thanks alot.


Eric





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