Importing data of other software in SPSS

In this post, we will show you how to import data in SPSS by two ways: Copying and pasting data, and directly Importing data files of other software (download datasets).

1. Copying and pasting

In practice, the easiest way to get data into Stata is often overlooked: you can copy data from most applications as excel, that understand the concept of a table, and then paste the data into the data editor window. This approach works for all spreadsheet applications, many database applications, some word-processing applications, and even some webpages. Just copy the full range of data, paste it into the data editor window, and everything will probably work well.

Suppose that your friend has a small excel dataset about some very old cars; and you would like to put these data into SPSS.

Doing so is easier than you think as following:

• Copy the above data.
• Open the Data Editor Window; Then, select Edit > Paste.

You can see that SPSS has imported the data nicely.

Be careful if you are copying data from a spreadsheet, because spreadsheets can contain special formatting that ruins its rectangular form. Be sure that your spreadsheet does not contain blank rows, blank columns, repeated headers, or merged cells because these can cause trouble. As long as your spreadsheet looks like a table, you will be fine.

2. Importing data by using SPSS

Copying and pasting is a great way to bring data into SPSS, but if you need a clear audit trail for your data, you will need another way to bring data into SPSS. SPSS has some more specialized methods for reading data, that were created by other applications and stored in their proprietary formats.

We will show you how to import data files of other software in SPSS. Select File > Open, or click on the Open button > Files of type; now, you have options of importing with different file formats of other software such as Excel, Stata etc.

For example, we import here file created by Microsoft Excel.

If you have data in text format, you can read data by executing queries on a text database.

Be careful if you are copying data from a text database, because it can contain special formatting that ruins its rectangular form. Be sure that your text database does not contain blank rows, blank columns, repeated headers, or merged cells because these can cause trouble. As long as your spreadsheet looks like a table, you will be fine.