Q. I have some blank rows in my worksheet.  Stat/Transfer stops reading the data as soon as it encounters a blank row. Is there any way to work around this?

A. The reason Stat/Transfer behaves that way is that sometimes users like to put comments or notes at the bottom of their data block. If they put at least one blank line between the data and the comments, then by default, Stat/Transfer will read their data and skip the comments with no special actions on their part.

However if you can change the behavior in one of two ways. In the Options(2) dialog box, you can either set the Blank Rows option to control reading of blank lines, or you can explicitly set a data range by using the Data Range option  In the later case, Stat/Transfer will return all of the rows in the range you specify.  In other words, it assumes that you know what you are doing and will return blank rows if that is what you want.

Q. When I read my Excel spreadsheet, sometimes a whole column of numbers get transferred as an integer variable instead of as a float, or date variables do not get recognized as such. What should I do?

A. You can fix the problem in one of two ways.  First, you can simply change the target type in Stat/Transfer. Second, Stat/Transfer uses the format of the first non-blank cell in a column to determine the type of each column.  Make sure that these are set correctly. For date variables, you will have to make sure that you have formatted the first cell in the column with a date format.

Q. When I read my Excel spreadsheet, sometimes a whole column of numbers gets transferred as a string variable, even though it contains lots of numbers.

A. Stat/Transfer examines all of the cells in a column to determine the type. If there are any strings, the column will be transferred into a string variable and the numbers and dates that are in the column will be converted to their string representation. This scheme is, in general, what people expect, particularly for columns of mixed numeric and string indentifiers, where the alternative strategy would make the strings into missing values.
If you have a column that you want to force to numeric, you can check it to make sure that there are not any strings or numbers formatted with a “text” format. Alternativly, you can force a type conversion by using the controls on the Variables  dialog box.

Q. How should I represent missing values in my worksheet?

A. In general, you should just leave missing cells blank. You can  also  represent numeric missing data with a period.  Missing data for strings can be represented by an empty string (entered with a single quote). However, blanks work just as well as any of these alternatives.

Q. Stat/Transfer just won’t read my Excel worksheet?

A. Microsoft has chosen to leave some crucial tidbits out of its file format documentation. If you are having trouble with Excel, please do two things.  First, use the “Save As” menu option in Excel to save your data into Lotus 1-2-3 Version 2.x format. These files will be read by a different module within Stat/Transfer.   Second, make us aware of your problem, so that we can correct Stat/Transfer

Q. It seems to take a long time to read Quattro Pro worksheets, What’s the problem?

A. Quattro Pro is stored in columnwise order. Stat/Transfer must therefore transpose the entire file before it can read any of it.  If your file is large, you would do better to save it out in Lotus 1-2-3 format.

Q. I want to read the second sheet of a three dimensional worksheet file. How do I do it?

A.  Stat/Transfer will try and read the first non-blank page and make some sense of it.  If you file has more than one page, Stat/Transfer will put up a selection box which displays the name of each page. You can then select the appropriate page and Stat/Transfer will read the variable names and other dictionary information from that page.

[Home] [Products] [Ordering] [Downloads] [Support] [Lists] [Contact Us]

Please contact our Webmaster with questions or comments.