Sometimes, we would like to work with data that are stored in a spreadsheet file such as Microsoft Excel. There are a few ways we can get this data into Stata. We could use the import excel command to import the data into Stata. We could also export the data from the spreadsheet to a delimited text file and use the import delimited command. Finally, it is possible to copy and paste data directly from a spreadsheet into Stata's Data Editor. This method of importing data is not recommended when reproducibility is important. But it can be a useful method for importing spreadsheet data for simple demonstrations.
Let's begin by creating an Excel file for to use in our example. We first open a Stata system dataset called auto.
. sysuse auto (1978 automobile data)
Next, let's use Stata's export excel command to export our auto dataset to an Excel file named myauto.
. export excel myauto, sheet(auto) firstrow(variables) file myauto.xlsx saved
Note that I included two options after the comma: sheet() and firstrow(). The sheet(auto) option saves the data to a sheet named "auto" in the Excel file. And the firstrow(variables) option saves the variable names to the first row of the Excel file. You can verify that the Excel file was exported successfully by typing ls, and you should see a file named "myauto.xlsx".
. ls (output omitted) 7.6k 2/08/24 16:06 myauto.xlsx
Now we can copy and paste our Excel data into Stata. Let's first type clear to clear Stata's memory.
. clear
Then, type edit in Stata's Command window to open Stata's Data Editor in edit mode.
. edit
Next, open the Excel datafile using Excel, and use the cursor to select a block of data including the first row that contains the variable names. Place the cursor in the top left corner of Stata's Data Editor, right-click and select "Paste special", check the box next to "Treat first row as variable names", and click on "OK".
Now we can save our data to a Stata dataset by typing save myauto.
. save myauto file myauto.dta saved
You can watch a demonstration of these commands by clicking on the link to the YouTube video below. You can read more about these commands by clicking on the links to the Stata manual entries below.
Watch Importing delimited data.
Read more in the Stata Data Management Reference Manual; see [D] clear, [D] describe, [D] dir and ls, [D] edit, [D] import excel, [D] import delimited, [D] sysuse, and [D] save.
