st: Re: Problem with embedded quotes in strings when using insheet

[Chris Ruebeck <ruebeckc@lafayette.edu>]

There may be a way to get Excel to stop producing the double quotes.  
But it might not work with tab-delimited files.

I've always resorted to a good text editor's find-and-replace after the 
save from Excel and before using insheet in Stata.  For example, search 
on tab-quote-quote and replace with tab.  For an editor, use something 
like TextPad if you're on a PC, a derivative of Alpha on the Mac (and 
Linux?), or a derivative of Emacs anywhere.

Asking Stata to figure out the quote characters will probably be far 
too much work.

Chris

On Mar 30, 2005, at 9:30 PM, David E Moore wrote:

> I write out a portion of the data currently held in memory, including 
> some
> string variable values, using -outsheet-.  Some of the strings have 
> double
> quotes (not always balanced) embedded in them.  (I know, I shouldn't 
> have
> allowed this in the first place.)  When I -outsheet- the data it looks 
> perfectly
> fine and I can read it into Excel just fine.  Now, I want to append 
> more data to
> that file, so I -insheet- the original, append the new data, and 
> -outsheet-
> again.  When I -insheet- the data, the embedded quotes confuse the 
> heck out of
> the -insheet- parser and the data are no longer fine.  I can provide 
> details on
> what happens, but that isn't really relevant.
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