Another possibility is to look at
your file to see whether the assumption
is correct. Just having .dta extension
does not guarantee that you have
the right kind of file. I have had
experienced people getting confused
between saving a data file as a .dta
and saving a graph file as a .gph
and also experienced people who
saved some ASCII version of the
data and slapped on .dta as the extension
on the assumption that was sufficient.
These hypotheses may be too bizarre
for your case, but you appear to have
run through the standard possibilities.
On the whole I would still guess human
error above hardware error.
Looking at the file in a text editor
that supports hexadecimal or using
-hexdump- to peek at the file are
two ways of doing this. Bits of
the file should be recognisable
as variable names and labels, and
the opening bytes of the file
can only be of a few fixed kinds
(see -help dta-).
Nick
[email protected]
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of
> [email protected]
> Sent: 23 May 2004 13:58
> To: [email protected]
> Subject: st: re: dta file not stata format
>
>
> ted and michael-
> thanks for your suggestions. still no luck. perhaps it is
> something with the
> hardware i used to transfer files and not stata at all.
> best, sharon
*
* 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/
