Importing Data

 

I am going to work under the assumption that most data files you might want to open are in Excel, saved as either an “xls” or “xlsx” file.  If you want to avoid a possible headache, I would encourage you to enter data in SPSS from the start.  If you cannot do this, however, these steps might prove useful:

 

1.  Make sure that your variable labels are in the first row of the Excel spreadsheet (A1, B1, etc.)

 

2.  Leave missing values blank.  Do not fill them in with any other number or letter.

 

3.  Save the spreadsheet as a .xls or .xlsx file.

 

4.  Open SPSS.  Click on File > Open > Data.  Change the “Files of type:” to the appropriate file type (in this case, Excel) and click Open.  Tell SPSS to use the first line as the list of variable names.  Leave the “Worksheet” setting to “text delimited” and the “Range” field blank.  Click “Continue.”

 

Note: SPSS can also open datasets native to SAS, STATA, and several other platforms.  SPSS can also open space- and tab-delimited files if you specify the type correctly.

 

5.  This should open your data window and display the variable names correctly.  You will probably need to specify the variable type and values (if it is a categorical variable).  If you see a few fields that say “#NULL” or something similar, that is probably just a blank cell that didn’t transfer correctly.  Delete them.  If a NULL field was supposed to have a numerical value, the file didn’t transfer correctly, and you may need to cut and paste the values in and manually specify the variables in Variable View.